@James

Jobseekers do requirer you to look for work, it does not requirer you to actually work.

Minimum wage? why? There are jobs out there that pay significantly less than the minumum wage because the company claims to give them the remainder of there wage as "live costs"

Im quite sure if you add up all the benifits that a person recieves and doesnt work, including council tax and rent discounts, add that to their weekly jobseekers and they will be on something akin to the minimum wage, and even if its not, why should we pay for someone not to work? if they cant than thats different, but where i live theres a lot of people claiming and doing bugger all except getting in to fights in the streets and breaking things, costing us more money, im not saying have them working 48 hour weeks in terrible conditions, im talking a fair system of part time work in exchage for their benifits.

Its simple, if you make people that can work earn their benifits it will help the country because we are getting work done for effectively very little, if that money is low then it will encurrage them to get something better, ive worked my arse off since i was a teenager and i dont want to see my taxes wasted on people that dont give a damn about them selves, anything or anyone around them

i guess so....

MS have changed the spec of the device, its there action that has stopped you from using it so id assume they would replace it too. I do suspect that the number of units that failed were probably quite small, cutting down on piracy is one thing, but spending 100x more on replacement units seems stupid economic sense, i suppose those units could be sold of as referbs once they fixed them, especially if a new device is around the corner (?) my guess is its a tiny fraction of devices, probably with a particular batch number of the drives.

Well done MS, shame i dont have a console any more!

Really?

The Bronze Age?

Well if we go back far enough why don’t we blame the dinosaurs!

so tell me, the protestant / catholic divide in Ireland, mostly down to the forced occupation of Ireland by ourselves and the mass land clearings we imposed, the subsequent divide of the country in to two parts all largely as a result of the fears of a mainland invasion of the island by catholic supporting nations has nothing to do with the issues in Ireland. It would be interesting to see what people think over there, tribal conflicts before that time may have been troublesome but until they hit nation state levels it seems a bit far-fetched to say the issues in Ireland are as a result of Bronze Age men.

hmmm

There is a flaw in your argument, this conflict has been going on for a very very long time, much much longer than the Issues in Ireland, yes its taken on a different reasoning but the roots are the same. When you have two polarised views its unlikely there can ever be wholescale peace. Even Ireland today has issues.

There is no easy way out, infact i doubt there is a way out at all unless you hurt one group of people or another which is essentially what it comes down too.

person A says, this is mine

Person B says, no its mine

everyone else says, i agree with x

Its being going on for too long to draw blame to one group of another and neither are willing to compramise, and more importantly even if they did agree as leaders, not all the followers will agree, and again, you end up with polarised views.

Goopplesoft

Hell, i'll upvote you for that word alone :)

question

Ive got a question for everyone, and please dont slate me for this, im curious and thats why im asking.

At what point do we allow the world to change is climate? it changes all the time, its on a natural warming cycle just now so who are we do try are keep it the same. And lets assume for a second that we are able to keep the climate to our needs, what would the long term effects be? would the world behave like an elastic band, stretched until it snaps?

Also, the climate suites us very well at the moment but that cant be said for everywhere, who are we to say that jo blogs in the north cant have a warmer climate because we dont want it too warm, on the flip side who is to say that those in the warmest regions wouldnt want it to be cooler.

Im all up for not needlessly poluting our planet but at what point did we suddenly become the climate police and there by changing or insisting on our views being the correct view.

Curiously, a warmer brition would be hugely benificial in a economic sense....so anyway, whats your thoughts on that?

shameless

get over it, it happens once every few decades, if you cant fill your otherwise boring life with something more intresting then sitting in front of a TV complaining about whats on it, then thats your problem. The rest of us have had a good time thanks.

As for the shuttle, your rubbishing a significant period of history, yeah the shuttle has had its ups and downs, but its coming to the end of an era, dont make jokes out of it, history has shown us what happens when you rush space travel, people end up dead, so once again, let them get on with it and stop moaning.

aye

Of course not, because politicians dont do anything for the wider public

no one wants them built next to them but given that the locations for these things are usually remote its a tiny proportion of the voting public.

your right tho, lets build one of these monsters on top of every city house and see if it wins votes, of course it wont, but you build these things far enough away and its no longer their problem.

Im telling you, this country is a victim of its own stupidity.

why we spend a fortune on Windmills?

Actually its pretty simple, politics

its quick, its high visability and politicians can say, hay look at what we are doing.

Its to help buy your votes

Why would any govenment want to start a project that wouldnt be finished before the next election, it doesnt give them any more votes ad by the time they are finished no one will be really intrested.

Its this short sighted policy that has got this whole country screwed

no no no

you all missed my point, i dont believe he exists but there is no point arguing because no one can prove it either way, so if they say we are all as human beings to stupid to understand, they are happy because we cant counter it and we are happy because we all know its a load of bollocks.

Blimey, i know was subtle but i didnt think i needed to spell it out!

:)

nope....

....apparently im one of a few people that knows how to use it,

Its still used a lot more than you think, every day i end up signing for something on one of these devices from several different companies or persons.

as for my definition of usability, it is in deed my definition, as i said its my opinion from very lengthy periods of time using all of teh said OS's I have two PDAs, one running WP7 one running WM6.5, the WP7 used to be an iphone then an Android, between the 2 MS OS's there is pretty much nothing i cant do infact i can even run android on the WM6.5 device if i choose, at the touch of a button, but i no longer choose to do so now i have WP7

Duel booting WP7 and WM6.5 would be of a great use for me because 6.5 is very useful still

Government procurement

absolutely, They are a company trying to make money, but as you pointed out, everyone else isnt plain stupid and wouldnt get them selves in to a situation like our govenments have.

I think, very very slowly people are starting to realise that the govenment doesnt have its own money, it takes ours, so the question we should be asking is, would you go shopping and hand over a blank signed cheque?

reality of costs

ah, kinda, but nope not really, because the money was coming out of our pockets in the first place. Basically they are saying

Happy xmas, here is a wee prezzy for you, oh, by the way i had to borrow your money to buy it.

yes some of that money will filter back in to the tax system but in terms of the benifit to the UK economy its a net loss.

Or think of it another way, the previous govenment spent a collosal amout of money on the banks, good for the banks, yes, and good for the people who had money in their banks, but they cant keep giving money out to everyone as they are all ready trillions of pounds in debt, in fact if you think about it, you I and every other tax payer out there who holds money in those effected banks effectively just brought their own money again.

No what would be better is to save as much money as possible now by scrapping this waste, reduce spending and our huge debt THEN reduce taxes, encurrage private sector growth, get companies making crap and selling it off abroad, that is the only way to improve the whole economy. Recycling our money isnt and wont improving anything as a whole, oh except the people (CEOs) and those companies who hold the govenments hands that is.... whoops sorry bit of a rant there! :)

rivers

you can, and doing such things is great on a local level, farmers are getting in on the idea in quite a big way but it would not be possible to roll it out on a massive scale. for the likes of a city

Defence in depth is what is needed, you must have a back bone of core power generation capable of powering the country if needed, coal oil gas and Nuclear are idea for this, all of them have pros and cons, in the long term however nuclear is the only viable design if we are not to rely on a source of energy that wouldnt run out in the near-ish future. Future Nuclear designes are even more intresting if it can be made to work and would prolong the life of nuclear energy until the sun blows up.

suppliment this with whatever else you can get, geothermal is sustainable but im unsure how easy it would be to get working efficiently in the UK, tidal is fine if you dont mind buggering up the seas, solar would be useful if it could be made significantly more effecient (solar cells are crap)

Wind and hydro are ok for local communities but somehow i doubt local communities would want one of those bloody great farms on their doorsteps but to suppliment standard power for LOCAL use would be fine, ie, i could park a turbine on my roof to help my personally, or a local hamlet could put a couple of big ones up, hydro is intresting but i think its safe to say its only a last resort, and i dont like the idea of flooding more of our great country side. rivers would be fine again for local use

all of these need to be in place to help out when they can, setting your target of x% to be wind in 10 years is stupid, 100% of the power needs to be available 24 7, that means big plants, if its windy or sunny then some of that can be offset reducing the total output to say 80% at any given moment.

geothermal is probably the only one that could be relied apon at any given time.

france

given that we buy a large chunk of energy from France i think there must be ways of getting power across a wee bit of water, if it goes one way it can go the other,

coal

there is plenty of coal around, your right, and the tech to make it very clean is there too but it will never happen, cost for one, thats why they closed and two, politictians have used the green argument for their own ends so much so that any back tracking would be political suicide, the public sucked up all of this vote winning nonsense, and whilst im not saying its all rubbish, the way it was reported was and any reversal in policy would be very hard to get passed general opinion now

intrestingly

You probably wouldnt have liked WP7 on a short few min trial, i was a heavy WM then android user, and id say it took about 2 weeks before i fell in love with it, not because it wasnt any good, but because my expectations were very different, and over a period of time i realised that actually, no i dont need to mod the crap out of it, it works great as it is.

So yeah, if your used to WM or droid or iOS or whatever, dont base your decision on 5 10 min play in the shop, it takes a lot more to realise its true potential.

hd7

your right, im on that forum a lot, im actually more likely to buy another HD2 if mine dies, they are getting much cheaper! my thoughts on the HD7 are that, essentially, they share the same hardware, except several small differences, screen, battery controler bootloader etc, so im hoping that some smart chap is able to get the HD7 ironed out a bit more, forinstance, most issues with the HD2 are minor and would probably be fixed if we had the HD7 hardware, so the HD2 WP7 ROM on a HD7 would be quite useful.....perhaps! although saying that the HD2 WP7 ROM isnt from the HD7 anway so who knows how that would work.

@domster

partially agree with you there, there is no point thinking about other planets, there needs to be a commercial reason to go to space first, that will drive costs down and increase tech advances, we should be looking no further than the asteroid belt, or even the moon if it has anything useful on it, i suppose robotics could be used for mining and blasting stuff back to earth but thats some way away, an automated drilling station sounds a bit far fetched at the moment but not totally beyond our reach

uk space race

actually, you are correct, we did have a great opertunity in the 20-30 years after the war but what you seem to forget is how crippled our country was. WW1 was a torpedo below the water line for GB, very much a listing ship, WW2 was a tall boy in the engine room. we were screwed, hell, we are still screwed. As much as i would like to kick sucessive govenments for making things worse the real damage was already done. nothing would ever be the same again.

Slightly off topic, our country still believe we have some endless pot of money but the fact is we are nothing of our former selves and we cant afford all the freebies and hand outs successive govenments have passed out to buy our votes. We are all victims of our selves, systemattically voting in govenments who openly brang about how much more of our money they are going to spend then the opersition will, your right though, if things wernt so crap then perhaps we could at least start building on something we could sell to other countries and make some money, but no, not going to happen, that would mean promoting the private sector more.

@hmm

that is not the issue, yes it could have been significantly worse and yes im sure tehy will learn from this for many decades to come, this issue is the way in which mainstream media outlets have handled this. Its very disapointing, i heard on the radio today about the 10,000 times increase and thought instantly that that sounds like horse xxit, so i got home, did some digging and low and behold, it was nonsense. Im sorry, but whilst Lewis does tend to dress things up a bit its more accurate than the tripe that is comeing out of the BBC. a news channel is supposed to report the news, not make it up, and what the hell is the point of it at all if you have to check their reporting out yourself to get an accurate picture of whats going on?? teh BBC has lost a lot of credability in my eyes on this one, and ive voiced my thoughts to them on the matter, as well as some simple guide lines for checking there "facts" before reporting them.

Er, no

Im talking about the 30 odd health systems above the states largely based in Europe, many of which are considered better than the NHS

Listen mate, you can start calling me names, which is quite imature, but the fact remains, the NHS is good idea that will never work, as for being selfish, i dont claim anything from the govenment, i dont earn a lot of money but i make do with what i have, if i get ill id rather pay for it, likewise why should you pay for something that i need? you shouldnt, this country is full of people expecting everything for nothing, but it all costs money, please tell me, what would you do, the NHS is a massive organization, that will need to increase its funding every year as the population grows, not only this but people are living longer, tell me, where does all this money come from? it comes from all of us in the form of tax, the problem is when people get to a certain age they stop working and stop adding to the tax system, if you keep adding people to the population all of whom live longer, and by-n-large use a disproportionate amount of NHS services something is going to give!

Why do you think the govenment has had to put back retirerment age? because it cant afford the pensions defict because we are all living longer, so you have to work longer to keep the funding available.

Look i like the idea, i hate the way its managed but it will not work in the long run.

argument fail

Hey, ill pay insurance and and keep myself happy thanks, but why the hell should i have to pay money in the form of tax to give you a transplant UNLESS your unable to pay for insurance, likewise, why should i have to pay tax to pay for doctors pay rises above inflation when other NHS staff are on a pay freeze

Im not going in to detail but this is basically a working model, if i have a problem today i can go to some places within Europe get seen and treated in the same day, then ironically change some of it back to the NHS

Im sorry, but the NHS is a monolithic monumental organization that is wasteing our money left right and centre. If the NHS was a private company it would have been liqudated long ago for missmanagment

look, this is it....

and thats my pont, people believe they are due something for nothing, people want lower taxes but want more credits and freebies, im not blaming this govenment or the previous one, but every govenment for the last 60 odd years has been buying votes with freebies, but all that costs money which is taken out of the private sector, which reduces the private sector and there by reduces income, meanwhile the public sector is increasing in size and sucking more money out,

This deficit you keep hearing isnt our countrys debt, its the amount added to our debt every year, fill up your kitchen sink with water, and drop a egg cup more in to it,

that is what the deficit /added to debt looks like

It Is something like 4 or 5 Trillion pounds total debt including pensions and what not

or

£4,000,000,000,000.00 - £5,000,000,000,000.00

So lets assume that they do make 20Billion worth of saveings, our debt is still going to go up because we would still be borrowing 140billion a year, its not hard to imagin

if you take out a loan for £40,000, then add up your income, take away all your bills including the intrest on that loan, you will be overdrawn by £1,600 each and every year

no person would be daft enough to keep that up, so you would have to cut back on your bills, or increase your income, increasing income means tax which will actual hurts the amount of tax you would get (im saving money on petrol because its to expencive to buy so im not buying any petrol, ie no tax at all) or reducing our bills, which means no more freebies and reckless waste

@ greatest fail

there is only so much you can plan for, with the power of hynd sight you can say almost anything you like but before the fact its impossible

forinstance, whats to say in two days time a small metorite hits sizewell B plant

has that been taken in to account? should all plants be protected against anything falling out of the sky? or what about a aircraft, dropping a 747 on one of the things probably isnt going to do it much good, who would have thought one could take down the trade center?

my point is, moving forward they will make it more redundant, more safe, that there is no doubt, like the did with the apollo missions you mentioned, but there is only so far they can plan.

actually.,.,,,

id love to, the idea is very simple and micro nuclear plants have been designed, but govenment rules and regulations would get in the way, so, ill fire one back, all you anti nuke people join forces to get the govenment to allow us pro nuke people to build these devices and ill park one at every house i own, plus i will charge the national grid to supply you guys with electricity, of course much cheaper than what you currently get

:)

intresting

so if nuclear power isnt the answer then what is? renewables? dont make me laugh, the whole country and its coast line would need to be covered in them and they are massively dependant on weather effects, and we cant build oil and coal plants any more because thats not green, ignoring the massive amount of research that has gone in to them and in actual fact has made them considerably greener, but the public of today doesnt realise this, burning coat and oil MUST be bad

so what is the answer?

hmmm

you cant download a car, that would be silly, but you can jump in a car and drive it around for a while to see if your happy with it...cant do that with movies im afraid

really

this doesnt put any money in to the economy, think about it, the MOD buys something from a company, fair enough that company gets a sizeable chuck of money, but given that the MOD doesnt have any money in the first place that money must come from somewhere, and it does, tax, so they tax everyone else there by removing money from the private sector to buy something, except its not as simple as that, becase we still need to pay all the idiots who came up with this idea in the first place so we have to be taxed more so to make up the difference, so in actual fact whenever the MOD or the govenment in general spends anything on anything we are all taxed for it and its doesnt add value to the econemy at all, the over all effect is negative, yes that one company will do well out of it but you need to think about the bigger picture.

whats needed is for us to actually sell something to other people outside of the country, this is why, or partly why the country is so screwed.,

read it again

i didnt say "i as in me" read it in context and it was a possible statement from a member of staff within that govenment, i havent stated anything that i prefere but i hve stated that all the anti MS BS getting very boring

hmm but...

but thats not the smart way for joe blogs public, tell me, how many programs on Linux need to have OS specific files?

Linux is very fragmented and whilst its not that difficult to do for people that know what they are doing its not so straight forward for other people.

Everything has its market, what suites you doesnt suite others, thats the nature of everything/

naa

as i posted, i seriously doubt you will see a windows 8 desktop version.

I'll place my bet on a Windows Tablet 8 which is a reskined desktop 7 with minor code changes .

You will then see a few years down the line a Desktop 8, and a phone 8.

the next version will be a Windows (insert market) 9 which will be even more compatible and intertwoven which each other using plenty of cloud based functions to go between them all.

thats a guess obviously, but i think its a reasonable suggestion and much more likely then a Desktop 8 coming next year.