barclaycon

Ha. Sorry Lizzie. I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at the whole Windows 8 debacle. How to mess up big time - even when they had a virtual strangle hold on the computer market! Microsoft released something that was meant to satisy the tablet market as well as the PC market and ended up pleasing neither. It's just not a nice system to use. You're right about tablets - iPads etc. You can just pick them up and they are fairly intuitive. But most grown ups want to type letters on a proper keyboard - have a reasonable sized screen and have a decent amount of storage i.e. a laptop or PC.

Experience has taught me that ALL surveys are trouble! Internet or otherwise. They are just scams to get your personal info. They want to profile and pigeon-hole you and then pass your information on to other market research monkeys. If I thought they would do any good i.e. using your opinion to change something for the better than I might have a different opinion but, as I say, I have always found them to be intrusive time wasting. What's more they distort information to suit their purpose anyway. For example, I wanted to complain about a supermarket a while back so went to their website

The best software for photo manipulation is, of course, Photoshop. It can do some astonishing things and for that reason has been much pirated! I'm certain that a lot of people used cracked versions (even though they might not admit it) because the cost was very high. However I think that Adobe (the maker of Photoshop) have now shot themselves in the foot. They obviously know that their flagship programme has many 'unofficial' users so what they have decided to do now is only allow people to license the programme. You can't buy it - you have to rent it via the 'cloud' and pay them about £

I recently tried to upload some photo's for an item I was selling. It's the kind of thing I'd done quite easily before by using Picasa (or whatever Google photo's calls itself now). But this time it was a complete pain in the butt. They've now made it so difficult and unwieldy that in the end I just gave up ! It's one of the primary uses for the internet (displaying photo's) and it used to be so easy to do, but now they want you download some software, put up with a load of adverts, or pay some subscription etc etc. Like I say, I gave up on the Google one. I tried Photobucket and a few o

What ? !! No security flaws, no bug fixes, no constant updates ? Can't be a real Operating System ( !) I know what you mean loppylugs.....I tried Mint on my laptop a while back and was amazed at how easy it was to install and use. It also has a lot of software available for it now (free) to do all the things that you had to buy from Microsoft. It's amazing really that Microsoft came up with an operating system that worked so well. XP has lasted 13 years - well beyond it's projected life, and now they're desperate to kill it. I still maintain that people would have moved away from it a l

Oh No ! Support for Windows XP ends today ! If you turn on your computer and connect to the internet then you will be invaded by every virus and fearful exploit. What's more, all your software will stop working and your monitor will burst into flames. If only you'd done what Microsoft told you and gone out and bought all their latest products. Or maybe...... nothing bad will happen and you'll just carry on as normal

The tram system is the 'pet project' of Notts Labour council. It doesn't matter how much they spend on it, what the demand is likely to be, or what disruption it causes. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with this wonderful icon ! That's why the fares are so high on everything else - buses (and the trams themselves), why the parking charges are so high, why there is an enormous work parking space levy, why the business rates and rents are unaffordable. I think when it's finished it's going to be a huge white elephant. Not that I have anything against trams - I actually really like them,

Now that football is seen as a 'product' and buying a club is an investment opportunity, you have idiots in the boardroom thinking that they can micro-manage and 'strategise' their way into the Premier league. I believe Psycho's reluctance to take the Forest job in the first place was because they wanted to have first say on what players to buy and sell - and basically to run the backroom themselves. They just seem to want the manager to be a politician and look good at press conferences. And when the results don't come - or the team gets beaten 5 - 0 they can blame him and fire him in a ver

Looks like Pearce is on his way back to Notts. Probably fixed them with the 'Psycho stare' in the 2nd interview.

There were 2 ways of getting into town from Bramcote. (I'm talking about the 60's - 70's here). One was from Derby Road (bottom of Sandy lane) and that was either a Barton bus or a Derby 8 which was Trent. I'm not sure what bus stations they went to because I nearly always got off beforehand at the stop after Canning Circus. The other way of getting into town was from Bramcote Lane. The E8 or F5 (Mansfield and then Midland General) which went via Ilkeston Road and ran to Mount Street bus station.

Very nice collection of photo's. Well done.

I thought that here in the 21st century we had sophisticated systems that could track where an aircraft was flying? We're now hearing that the standard communication systems on the flight were deliberately turned off, but don't the surrounding countries have radar to track objects moving into their airspace ? They must have seen it's path. Don't Rolls Royce have an engine monitoring system that tracks the performance of all of their engines in flight ? (I'm assuming that the 777 was fitted with Trent engines). 7 days after the flight disappeared we're being told that the satellite 'pinging

Never liked him myself either. The Benn Diaries were a bit like 'How I Was Right About Everything'. Politics in this country works best when there are opposing views (especially with the governement) and he was often on things like Question Time in that role. I think he misinterpreted that as being that his opinion was more important than it actually was. Like I said, I didn't like the bloke, I didn't agree with a lot of his views and I thought he was misguided - but people like him are still needed in our world. Same with Bob Crow. R.I.P.

It's an 'earner'. Since the 80's local councils now see themselves as businesses. They don't do the job that they are elected to do and don't give a single thought as to whether things are affordable or for the 'benefit' of people. It's time there was a 'route and branch' investigation into the actions of local councils who do actually that think they can just keep pumping us for more and more money.

Yes, the fares are ridiculous. They only went up last year and now they are doing it again. It would seem that the tram system is the focus of everything. They predicted that 14 million journeys would take place, but only 8 million did. So now they are putting the price of everything up: parking, the car levy (now over £300 a year), bus prices - I'm sure even the cost of tram journeys will ramp up too. Did nobody tell them about the recession? The whole point about public transport is that it should be affordable. It's for getting people to work and encouraging people to go into town to s

My attempt to be amusing has clearly eluded you. "River Trent runs uphill ..... question mark", was intended to be a witty remark to promote discussion as to why the Trent 'unusually' flows South to North. Not a statement of fact. I didn't say the Trent defies the laws of gravity did I ?

Yeah allright mate. Lighten up. It wasn't meant to be a statement of fact.

Most rivers, here in England - flow North to South. The Trent is an exception. I think in geography at school we were encouraged to think that all rivers flow towards the equator, but I gather that the main factor in any flow really is height.

I guess the geology of the land MUST be downhill for it to flow in such a way. But I just wondered how much the flow is increased by tributaries - like the Derwent, especially as the movement of the water towards the Humber has to overcome the tidal surge which happens twice a day.

No, you're not thick Lizzie, and I'm sure that you are quite intriguing! Rivers tend to flow from North to South. The Trent however does the opposite - hence my attempt to be amusing and rather witty with the remark that 'it's almost as though it's flowing uphill'! My aim was to draw you into the conversation. Worked great.

With all the floods and swollen rivers, I was curious to know more about the course and flow of the River Trent and also the Derwent. Having lived in Yorkshire as a kid, I knew there was a River Derwent there which actually flows down from the Moors, so I wondered what the Derwent in Derby was all about. Apparently there are 4 River Derwents in England: Yorkshire, Durham, Derbyshire and Cumbrian. So it's easy to get confused! The River Derwent in Derbyshire joins the Trent just south of Derby. What is unusual about the Trent is that it flows North. Wiki says that it rises near Stoke, star

ITV has got that loathsome git Adam Crozier at the helm. In true whizz-kid style he has increased the amount of advertising ridiculously. After midnight it's all roullete wheels and pin-head presenters saying 'That's amazing!' about some silly piece of crap from JML. All throughout Freeview we've got those 2 David Bedford lookalikes with 118 118 adverts. They're everywhere! They must be making a fortune if they can afford to have constant adverts all the time - for, less face it, what used to be 'Directory Enquiries' - a free service. Meerkats, opera singers.... price comparison websites.

Adverts have got progressively worse since the explosion of channels on satellite TV. There was a time when television commercials were special and commanded high prices. I'm sure many of us can remember some of the classic adverts from wayback when like Cadburys Smash, Fiat Cars (with the robots), Tango, Campari etc etc. Now it seems to be all about people shouting. Loud 'In Your Face' selling. Get it NOW!! Whizz bang 4 second adverts for films. It's just a massive bombardment of the senses. No wonder people are recording things on the HD box and fast forwarding through the ad-breaks.

Vista was truly dreadful. An example of something that was released before it was ready. The market expects Microsoft to bring out a new operating system every 5 years and if they don't then the share price suffers. So they brought out a 'poorly performing' Vista and, truth be told, it did them a great deal of harm. Windows 7 is essentially what Vista should have been. With SP1 it's actually not too bad. As I said before, XP is the OS that just won't die and Microsoft's attempts to kill it are just sending people to other systems other than their own. Internet Explorer can't be updated p

Looks good though doesn't it. I was suprised at how easy it was to get going and the amount of equivalent software that there is now available (which had always been my criticism of Linux before). Let us know how you get on with it and whether you can get it to do what you want.