Rydra

Isn't the point above that instead of all traffic being limited, known streaming media sites (iplayer, 4oD etc) will be excluded from it?

That would be my take on it. The man is simply a genius in every right, and those achievements alone will see him set as one of the greatest scientific minds ever. A study of his scientific/mathematic achievements does not require mentioning his disability. A study of the man and his life in general though should not exclude it. His achievements in overcoming them, and his sheer determination in everything he does is a quality rarely seen in any person.

Most of these things are nothing but a cable. I used to work for an epos company in the repair centre. As stated price displays tend to still be serial based. Most cash draws Will use a unique connector but the few I've seen and worked with looked like a modem/phone connector. Before buying a £150 cable find out if its just a cable or if its got an electronic converter on it. Depending on the system it might need a voltage converter built in

Parents been with then TV wise since they were Cable TV/Telewest and all the way through free dialup. Only updated their package with them a year or so ago, and were on 10mb.... When they first got broadband they were on 512mb! Virgin will periodically change the speeds of their packages as they up them. In general, when they bring out a new top package, they decom the bottom package and upgrade. In 4 years I've had 2 upgrades due to this, but I'm now on the 20mb package, so will be quite some time till I get an upgrade I suspect. For a heavy downloader, watching of iplayer/internet TV your going to hit your limit watching HD TV or dl'ing movies. BT and most of the services based around BT will have a monthly cap on downloading that a normal user will not hit (if they aren't torrenting 24/7 or whatever). But when you hit that limit, either you get no internet till the next month, or your going to be paying a few pound per gb of data. Virgin simply throttle you when you hit your limit for a few hours, a few hours later your back to the full speed again. Also, BT based lines will say "Up to" on most of their packages. Though they have improved this over the years, if you buy a 10mb line, you can get ANYTHING up to 10mb, and i've known people in slightly out of town areas to barely get 1-2mb here. With Virgin you will get 8-10mb all the time, and on occasions i've clocked speeds above that which I pay for (rare though). Their customer service is at times awful, and i've dealt with them a lot over the years for upgrades, fixes and queries on billing, all sorts of stuff. Although highly frustrating at times, their services have improved greatly, and they do have a couple of UK based centres. BUT, out of hours/peak time calls are handled (or supplimented) by 2 or 3 oversea's call centres. These people will fight if you try and deviate from their script. Be clear and concise, and persistent and you'll get there eventually. I've never had anything unresolved by them, just a little slow on the uptake.

That is really the concern of the Teachers, not the support staff. They are paid to plan and account for grades and work out ways of improving them. We are here to support the staff in teaching and learning as best we can. The job is to make sure the systems run as best as they can, and where possible suggest ways of improving it. Not to worry about X student getting the grade they need for that college course. If a student or teacher asks me for help of course I'll do what I can to help within the scope of my job and my abilities. But it is not my job to ensure that his grades are met as expected, that is between the student and the teacher.

This mindset takes a little time and effort to get into, and not everyone can manage it. And the short answer is, take less to heart, and care less! I've said it to students and teachers before, and it may sound harsh, but it's really not! I don't really care about the students themselves, or even to a certain extent the teachers. Our jobs and main focus is that "Teaching" happens, and has the best tools possible to do that. And in reality, the percentage of students who get A-C, or whatever in the annual stats means nothing to me. Their GCSE scores do not affect my workload. So do I care about X student and wheither they'll get a B or a C in some subject? Not really, it doesn't really affect my job. Equally, I don't really care if X teacher really wants to have itunes to sync with their ipod as their home PC isn't working or whatever. Their ability to listen to music in their spare time is not my concern. I will go out of my way to help them, IF and only IF it does not affect my ability to do my main focus; my job relating to ICT, and keeping teaching going. Some might see this as selfish, but in reality they are probably just grumpy as they were planning on asking you to do something cheeky. Most people will respect this, and it shows commitment and responsibility. So use your helpdesk wisely. And where needed, either ask the people wanting favours to come back when it's more convenient, or take note of it, and offer to fix it when you can. Anything else, goes on the helpdesk.

Prison is there for people who need to be removed from the public domain. I don't condone either act, and certainly don't agree with either of them. But locking that ex-teacher up for life would not help anyone, especially not him. He can no longer work with children, and will have a conviction for 10 years, and a stigma against him the rest of his life. With psychiatric help and the right motivation, the man will still be able to lead a life, just not the one he wanted. We all know people with problems, if we condemned them all the world would be more prisons than free people! How many of you have, or know someone who has taken part in an act of piracy, or bought drugs? Many of these acts fuel the same groups who he has been accused of enabling. This guy has crossed the first hurdle by admitting a problem and pleading guilty. He has himself shown no malicious intent, and is a danger to himself more than others. The second guy is a danger to society. Destroying another person and their family for the sake of a few pay grades is dispicable. It shows a complete lack of morality, and had he not been stopped when he did, what is to say he wouldn't have escalated to assault or murder? I do think the first case should have been a longer sentance, but do not think it deserved 12 years.

Psychology

Myself I've only bought one house, but i've helped parents to sell 3 houses so far. Work out what the house is worth in 'perfect' condition (aka all walls painted no wallpaper, all up to date electricals, guttering, garden in good order, decent flooring, lighting, new bathroom/kitchen). Then work out how much it would take to get it all into that condition. Asking price should be between the two figures. And always be prepared to refuse an offer if it's below what you want. My parents tried to sell my nans house after she died, and a couple days before exchange the (potential) buyers tried to knock us down another £8k, hoping we were desperate for the move and would just take it. Since noone was living there, and no chain below us we refused to drop any lower, and they pulled out. 6 weeks later we sold the house for 4k more than the first bunch were going for.

There's a shop in Milton Keynes shopping centre that specialises in selling american food products, especially sweets. The wife loves it there, I have to artfully steer away from it whenever i go there.

Admittedly they've been driving for twice as long as I have, but my parents have both had more accidents than me, my mother especially And I have to say, out of the friends i have of my age (26), not one of us has got a speeding ticket, I'm the only one to have written off a car (tyre blew out on a dual carriageway at 60mph, hit a bump, and spun it into the central reservation. I walked away, only limping slightly from swearing and kicking the car!) and we drive all sorts of cars, from the first couple of cars being saxo's and 1L Polo's, up to 1.6 Astra's, up to 2.0L Honda Civic's and Focus's. And those who bought new(er) cars worth more than a few hundred are more likely to take things easy than someone driving a £500 bangar. My wife did the pass plus course, myself I decided not to (didn't work out cheaper for me), but I am by far a better driver than my wife, who learned 3-4 years after I did.

We have 2 PC's bought recently that came with Windows 7 Home Premium on them. One is one of these Touch based All in one PC's from HP, and the other just a bog standard laptop for a teacher. Just to note before we go off on it, I (the NM) did not buy these machines myself, they were bought by departments themselves out of different budgets. It's an ongoing fight that I am slowly winning, but haven't won yet. So when i found out we were getting them, I reminded them that this OS wouldn't work and that we'd need a Prof upgrade license to go with each of them, and when they placed the order, they asked the supplier, and bought the upgrade disk and license with the machines. Went to do the upgrade, and it didn't work. The disk, tells me I need to use the anytime upgrade to do it. The anytime upgrade tells me the license I recieved is not compatible. So a call back to the account manager, which goes back to Microsoft, it turns out the Windows UPGRADE licenses you buy on select or oem etc, are for upgrading OLDER versions (eg xp Pro, Vista business) to Windows 7, and DO NOT work as upgrades to home versions of the same OS. This causes a special issue with the Touch PC, which comes with a number of software suites that I cannot redownload, and as usual with new pc's, you don't get a 'driver disk' you get a backup/recovery disk instead.

I was greeted by a couple of police officers last night (had to call them to deal with some kids being idiotic and interupting a meeting, and refusing to leave private property). As we stood outside chatting to them briefly, someone further down the road attempted to pull their car off the driveway, and barely suceeded, with large amounts of disengaged clutch revving, and a 5 point turn to pull off of the driveway.... They had to cut their conversation short to go and catch him, as suspected the driver was either 12 years old or drunk off their face! I was very tempted to go follow them and see if they caught up, but as i hadn't been home for over 14 hours i decided to just head home the direct route. As to the statistics, I would agree that a young driver is more likely to behave like an idiot in a car etc. And though insurance companies don't distinguish them, there is a difference between having an accident and behaving like an idiot and causing an accident. But if you raised the minimum driving age to 25, those stats would very likely change to 25-30 years old being the most accident prone, since only part of the problem is idiot drivers, the other part is the young persons part. Me, I'm a believer in darwinism, and have a dim view of people who knowingly put themselves at risk, and just as dim a view as others who put themselves at risk by associating with idiots. I've told people to let me out of a car before, and reported taxi drivers for driving like an idiot because I just don't want to die (60mph down a residential street in the winter with below freezing temperatures....) Thankfully the human race is capable of dynamic learning, evaluation and responsive processessing. It's what stops us from wondering what it feels like to shoot yourself in the face, jump off a cliff or stick your fingers in a socket to see what electricity feels like, and then repeat the test. So the concensus was, the original article is a loud of rubbish, a waste of time and effort and a slander to the name of 'scientists'. -Revamped practical test to cover motorways, night driving and other topics as a compulsory test rather than optional. -Some sort of retesting at set periods would be beneficial, since bad habits of older drivers is just as bad as young drivers who don't know any better -Harsher penalties for idiotic/dangerous drivers Some discussion on restrictions on use and car types allowed, but overall this was not recommended, since peoples usage and needs vary, and many of the restrictions would prove impractical.

TBH, most of the existing systems for stopping these problems are about the best they can be. We already have set levels for alcohol, with a lower limit (where you get points/fined), and a higher one (where it's debateable if your conscious and lose your license) as well as speed limits and clear procedures for dangerous driving. They, imo are not at fault here, though sanctions for repeat offenses at any/all ages and experience could possibly do with tweaking, mostly in the direction of harsher penalties. What is at fault is the views of some 'scientists' who make these studies, and then come out with outrageous suggestions that wouldn't even work if you lived inside a scripted computer game, let alone in real life. It all comes down to education, and reaches beyond just driving cars. With proper education, teenagers would not be out binge drinking, stealing cars, getting pregnant or any of those other stereotypical things that young people do. Firstly educate people about what is right and wrong, and WHY!!!! "Don't do that!" only works if they have a sense of reasoning, which requires an understanding of why they shouldn't do it, and what will happen WHEN they do it. It's a problem that many of us in education see regularly, that rules are in place everywhere, and children do not see an issue with breaking them. They don't see a good reason for the rules, so THEIR REASONING says it doesn't apply. THEN bring in sanctions to stop the MINORITY who decide, despite the above that the rules don't apply to them.

Stop making a MEAL out of these terrible jokes.

Haven't you watched Jonny English? It includes orange too, and banana shaped scar's. And of course eye patches.

I still don't think it's fair to restrict the usage of a vehicle. As someone earlier pointed out, sometimes a young person drives for the sole purpose of transport of others, so to ban passengers would be unfair. Also, banning engine sizes will only cause more issues as well, since many young people's first car will be their parents. I honestly think engine/car size has little to do with it, and in fact the small/cheap little cars are half the problem. A 17 year old with a £500 1l bangar car is more likely to thrash it than someone driving a £10k 2l Astra estate. especially if mum/dad have paid for it, the insurance, and responsible for repairing it! Edit: missed a bit! Plus I love the idea of 5-10 year retesting for ALL ages. The amount of adults I know with long held bad habits is amazing.

Dragging this back away from cyclist versus car, the main thing I have a problem with here, is using draconian curfews before fixing the issue. The issue is a minority of young+new drivers see a car as an extension of their epeen, and use it accordingly. A curfew is, unfortunately unlikely to help this. People who drink drive, speed, or do the various other stupid things like this are unlikely to pay attention to the time at which they do it. And for the police to enforce it will take much more effort and manpower, and though it may work in general, many more people will be put out and inconvenienced in the process. At 26 and 7+ years of driving, how is a police officer going to know to pull me over to ask for my ID, unless I was doing something wrong in the first place? Unless they just start randomly pulling over anyone driving at 2am, and having been stopped like this a couple of times, at 1-2am around xmas, it is mostly an annoyance and inconvenience. Improve the driving test which is woefully outdated. Too much emphasis on things like parallel parking, three point turns etc. while ignoring the more important things like how to drive on dual carriageways/motorways, nightime driving, hell i think there should a compulsory session on driving with passengers/full load of stuff, as a car handles VERY differently when you load up the rear, reducing traction, speed, and increasing distractions. I wouldn't mind seeing a repeat test within a short period of time. EG, pass the test, then 6 months later having to do another short test (preferably in own vehicle) to make sure you haven't ignored everything you did in learning, THEN getting full license? This could work nicely especially as the "Study" showed most have an accident in the first 6 months... And bring in harsher penalties for those who break the law in regards to drink driving, dangerous driving, and speeding in pedestrianised zones.

Think of a bike as a type of machinery, and only operate it accordingly to that. Don't do it drunk, tired, or while trying to do something else like eat, use a computer, or smoke.

I may be one of the rareties, but I passed my test first time, and I've been driving since i was 18/19 ish. I've been hit once, and crashed my car once due to a blowout. I'm now 26. I spent most of my younger life driving all over the place; i used to work night shifts finishing at around midnight, and i've gone to/from events and places at various times of the morning and night. When I wasn't driving, one of the rest of the mates drove. I have never driven with more than one drink in me, and that will only be with a meal, and when i know I won't be driving for 1-2 hours after, so well within the limits. I don't and never did get into the boy racing idiocy. And I've been a scout leader since i was 18, and have been out at all hours of the day/night over the years for events with this. It is better to penalise people who behave like an idiot with a car, then to penalise everyone just because they are the same age/race/gender. If someone rolls a Vauxhall Nova at 2am while drunk into a bush, damned well charge them/fine them/penalise them for it. In no other part of the law, do you see someone do something stupid, and everyone else get the blame for it. If one of you shot someone, should I be arrested and fined in case i feel the need to do so? What next, if all people under 25 have a curfew, there will be less crime/stabbings/drunk+disorderly? How about we just lock up everyone between 18 and 25 and save ourselves the trouble.

I heard on the radio this morning, but can't find a recent article on this. Apparently some crackpot scientist has decided the way to cut young driver deaths is to ban them from driving at nighttime, saying this could save 200 lives each year. Anyone else see how utterly stupid this is? I finish work each night at 5-6pm, and during the winter it is pitch black at this time. -No more 9-5 jobs for young people. -No more nightshift's -No more able to go out at night unless it's walkable or the parents drive you there. What about young parents? you know there are people who have children before they are 34! Then there's anyone who works with youth movements (such as scouting). There are so many flaws in this idea that I just cannot concieve them all. Idiotic plans like this annoy me, and the crackpots who come up with this make REAL scientists look bad. A REAL scientist weighs up ALL possibilities and checks for alternative outcomes before suggesting something.

110 PC's, 400 students, so about 1:4, Primary school. 50 of those not setup yet as only bought this summer.

The question of how much should someone be paid is a difficult one to answer. As a general rule, a manager should earn more than those he manages. Firstly because he is responsible for not just his own work, but ultimately for the work of those below them. As a result the more levels you add in, the higher the person at the top will earn. So in the line we work in there are two main tree's; the teachers and the support line. TA < Teacher < Head of Dept/Year < Deputy Head < Assistant Head < Headteacher and Technician < Department manager < Support team manager < Assistant Head < Headteacher this isn't set in stone, some will have more or less tiers, but that is generally how it works. As a rough guess, the salary banding for a role is about 10% of the base salary. So if you start a job earning 20k, you'll finish earning about 22-23k at the top of your salary band. Usually, from one role to the next level up will be 2-3 grades higher to allow for flexibility, so after the 20k starter, the next level of manager is about 28k, then next up will be about 40k and so on and so on. So for the BBC to have a lot of managers at 100k+ is not a far stretch if they conform to that general principle of salary banding. How often does the boss earn just 1-2k more than the technician? usually the gap is about 30-50% higher.

LG are always a very close competitor to Samsung, the internals are basically the same as I recall, made in the same factory in east Asia! Panasonic are also a good bet. From what i've seen, Samsung are great at making TV's, but these things are frequently not that good when it comes to other devices. Their monitors almost always lack one feature, never quite managing to get the full set. I have a Samsung 37" TV, one of the ones they released just before the super-slim LED tv's (which i just couldn't warrant/afford at the time). It has the works of DLNA etc, but I don't use it really, as I have a media server running on my main PC, and I use the PS3 for streaming, as I found it a more reliable platform to work with, but it did work well enough. Remember to buy a TV of the right size for the room. Buying a 50" TV for a 8ft x 6ft bedroom will look awful; you will be sitting too close to it, and it will always look pixelated, and probably require you to turn your head to take it all in. On the opposite front, if you've got a 20ft long living room, a 27" TV just won't be big enough! Sony and Samsung frequently use the same internal components, and in fact Samsung at least at one point were building the LCD's for Sony! so you could get the same LCD as sony, for £200 less by buying a samsung.

(belated) happy birthday, it was mine yesterday