migs

Why do you automatically assume you'll have to sack people? Has it not occurred to you that some employees might simply be disgruntled with being treated like shit for years by previous managers? You sound like ideal manager material, to me.

I'm amused that you think it had anything to do with the Lib Dems. Oh, and it comes in a budget during a time when inflation is running at nigh on 5%, with pay rises running at less than half that, and far more concessions given to the big multi-nationals, through a cut in corporation tax, than to any of the little men. They were already proposing a 1% cut, but doubled it to 2%. That only benefits those who helped to get us into this situation in the first place. They plan to tighten up on tax avoidance by big business, to raise £4bn. This, just months after they let Vodaphone off the hook, accepting just £1.2bn of a £7bn tax bill. In other words, £1.8bn more than the £4bn they intend to raise through new legislation. The net annual increase in the money in people's pockets amounts to about 3 full tanks of petrol. And don't get me started by mentioning the duty cut on fuel. They stuck 3p on a litre just 3 months ago, via VAT rises, so taking a penny off now is hardly a gift to motorists. Yes, I know it was a Labour policy, initially, but the goalposts had moved considerably, in the meantime, yet the Tories and their £4m pension pots introduced it anyway. Now, some things you may have missed. From now, any proposed developments will assume planning permission is granted, unless the local council can come up with "compelling reasons" why it shouldn't go ahead. Expect a Tesco at the end of your drive sometime soon. Additions to existing installations will no longer require planning permission. Expect an even bigger Tesco sometime soon. No longer will councils be able to prioritise brownfield development sites over greenfield. Expect a Tesco in an ancient woodland near you, sometime soon. Yet again, we see a Tory budget which suits big businesses and, yet again, they try to hide that fact in insignificant tax "breaks" for ordinary people.

Single mums in flip flops, purse in one hand, fags in the other. That's how you know summer is here.

Took me ages to find this. Only ever saw this cat once, on our back fence a couple of years ago, whilst it was menacing birds on the feeders.

Melons gave me my first ever rep, at which point I asked her the etiquette re thanking folks etc. Since then, to my embarrassment, I hadn't really looked at my userCP, mainly because I only do the occasional visit, and aren't a full member so don't get involved in repping/negging. Anyway, I appear to have been repped most by Section_31, with 4, then a whole bunch on 2. Total different reppers - 38. I've been negged once by half a dozen different people. I have reps from remmie and hamstrung which, from this thread, I gather are good things indeed. I also got a neg from hamstrung, though, so it's back to the 0-0 on that. Total points are 1220710, over 283 posts (including this one), but I have no idea if that's good or bad. Anyway, in case I was supposed to be thanking everyone, cheers for the reps, albeit neggingly-worthy late.

The attitude apparent in some of the comments on this thread baffle me. There is no joy in any football club facing potential bankruptcy. Yes, they have fans who are absolute cunts but, guess what, so do you. That's no reason to wish a football club out of existence. Football, generally, is in the mire because of an influx of greedy players, greedier agents and owners who think they can use a football club as a money making machine, when that is so far from the truth it's laughable but they take the money out, anyway. Football needs to fight to bring it back into the hands of us all, rather than the few. Revelling in a club's potential demise is not the way to do it.

Well, viewing NEF, tif and jpeg in Windows Picture Viewer (win7) is okay, albeit with a red channel that is way too invasive. Skin tones become almost ginga-like, and already vivid reds blow completely. Other than that, though, there are no noticeable artifacts or noise. Not even with NEF and jpeg from a D2x, which doesn't handle noise particularly well. Looks like the program might be broken, somehow. I've sent you a PM.

Noisy as in fan noise, or as in the hard drive thrashing away?

Well, call me fussy, but I don't reckon they're up to much by usual NG standards. They're good, no doubt, but not great. I just expect more from NG.

As Dynamite says, upgrading your memory is the cheapest, and often most effective way of improving performance. Don't get confused between memory and hard drive space, though. Hard drive is simply storage of programs and files, and memory is where the PC stores all the info it's using to actually run a program. The more memory, the less it has to swap data in and out, if you're running more than one program (which you always will be). Using an external hard drive, whilst a good upgrade option, will never be as fast as an internal hard drive, as data transfer rates to/from external drives are pedestrian in comparison. Your usage requirements will then dictate what comes next. If you do a lot of heavy graphics work, or run a lot of the latest games, then a new graphics card will take pressure off the onboard graphics on the main processor. After that, there are endless configurations of motherboard/processor which would help, but for which you start to stray into new base machine costs territory. It's one of those subject which can be as complex as you could ever want to make it. The best thing is to figure out what you need, get prices from PC World, and then look for the same product online. If you're really that big a PC mong, though, you might want to get someone to install the upgrades, lest you blow something up.

The css stylesheet isn't loading. Try clearing both your cache and browsing history data. I had the same problem ages ago, and that fixed it for me. I mainly use FF though, and only use the rest of the browsers for site testing, so I've no idea if it may have been version related.

Like everybody else, I generally can't fault Virgin BB. Always runs at full 20mb speed, and they recently upgraded the uplink, to finally give something like okayish upload speeds. I will query people's praise for their customer support, mind you. On the rare occasions I've had issues, their Indian call centre have been all but useless. I also reckon Virgin telly is better than Sky, for 2 main reasons - 1. The catch up facility is phenomenal 2. The V+ has 3 tuners, not just 2. The only thing lacking, is the app for programming the box remotely.

Are you shooting RAW or jpeg? Either way, I'd bin Windows Photo Viewer, and get IrfanView Install the main program, and then install the plugins. Make it your default for all image formats, and it will display absolutely everything, bar layered .psd files. I really mean everything, images, videos, mp3s, flash animations, the lot. Not to mention the lightning fast batch convert/rename facility. Honestly, you'll wonder why you bothered with anything else.

Phil was the kind of cunt who you really wanted to get whacked. Just cuntish for being cuntish's sake. Thing is, though, Phil was only that way because he let business get personal. Marlo, on the other hand, was simply a mean, cold psychopath who let nothing get in the way of the game. There was no pleasure in business, and that makes him superior to Phil in almost every way. Also, they way Marlo dealt with the two corner boys, at the very end of Season 5, left you in no doubt that he could do everything himself that he was expecting others to do. With Phil, you never had that, he was just a retarded thug. For all that, though, I'd still take The Sopranos over The Wire, if I had to choose. But only just.

It certainly isn't. Collective Bargaining, in most cases, will mean that a recognised Union will negotiate terms and conditions for all employees in Union-represented grades, regardless of Union membership status. That, however, is largely at the prerogative of the employer. It's not unknown for employers to move grades around, ignoring Union and employee protests. What this means is that the Union is unlikely to recognise the new grades, and this will exclude those employees from collective pay bargaining agreements. Shit, but true. Nobody is banned from opting out, though. Even those covered by collective bargaining agreements can decline to accept changes to pay and conditions. Of course, little support would be forthcoming from their Union, if they took that particular stance, and they would be foolish to do so. It's highly unlikely that any employer would tell an employee that they can refuse a negotiated pay rise (or whatever), but banned from opting out? No, certainly not.

If I wasn't too tight to pay the fee, I'd be repping you about now. After AudioGalaxy, Jumi Mouse+ is about the best app I've ever used. Speaking of which, if it hasn't already been mentioned, everybody in the world should have AudioGalaxy. It's free and it's ace.

As opposed to, oooh I don't know, capitalism, which has just worked out spiffily for all of us? You'll have to define "socialism", if you want that particular debate. I can only speak for myself and the union whose members I represent, but let's see. Well there was yesterday, and the time before that was probably Thursday. I admit though, that the time before that may have been as long ago as Wednesday. Your enquiry is borne of extreme ignorance and a blind belief in Daily Mail editorials. Not to mention highly insulting. So, you imply that unions serve no valid purpose for their members, and yet have never been a member of one. Can you tell us all where it was you obtained your masters in Industrial Relations, as you obviously consider yourself educated in the subject. You'll find God in a foxhole, everybody does.

Yet it was 1965 before the US Government passed legislation compelling states to guarantee votes for non-whites. If that is what the free world is based upon, no wonder the planet is seriously fucked up. It's typical of the arrogance of the USA that they still truly believe they are the land of the free, when they are no more than a wasteland for democratic rights. If most politicians, both Republican and Democrat, had their way, there would be no unions, no free healthcare of any kind, no rights for employees whatsoever - including no minimum wage, the list is endless. I'd say that ship has sailed.

Collective bargaining means, unfortunately, that there are likely to be winners and losers. Unless you have a single status agreement, where everybody gets identical pay and conditions, and these are increasingly rare, then you simply can't please all the people all of the time. There are 60,000 teachers in Wisconsin, and 482 have been - to use the American term for it - fired. You argue, via your posting of the article link, that the Unions should have accepted reduced pay and conditions for their members, in order to protect the jobs of those 482 people. Unfortunately, it just isn't that simple. For example, today a state's political leaders demand reductions in benefits and/or pay, or they threaten to lay off 500 people. The union concede and everybody's standard of living reduces to save 500 jobs. Tomorrow, the same leaders say more reductions are necessary, or they will lay off another 500. And so on. Where would it end? It is only right that a union would not be willing to surrender rights which may well have been won by way of cracked skulls and long, poverty-inducing strikes. To do so is severely retrograde, and only serves to benefit the employer, never the employee. Many have died, in order to improve pay and conditions for American workers. The tragedy is that, were Joe Hill alive today, there would still be a rifle pointed at his chest. The current arguments regarding employnent rights, as made by today's Republicans, simply show America hasn't progressed one bit in the last 80 years.

Nominate Deadwood, which is amongst the best ever, and seriously underrated. Second Band of Brothers

If you like music with a political bent, but you have no idea who David Rovics is, now's your chance. He's playing the Joe Hill Cafe in Kirkby, this Sunday. Having seen him play, met him and interviewed him, I can vouch that he's a tremendous singer-songwriter, and tells it like it is. It's a tenner or 6 quid for students/unwaged. Not only that, although Dave does sell CDs every single one of his tracks is available to download for free at Soundclick. Fuck Bono and the rest, that's how music should be. Full details of the tour on David Rovics - Songs of Social Significance

Thunderbird is the only option, IMHO. One tip, though, don't use the default mail folder when you set up an account, put it somewhere else. Otherwise, when Windows fucks up, which it will eventually, you won't have backed up properly and you'll lose your mail when you reinstall. Having it on a separate drive (preferably) makes it fully recoverable after a Windows reinstallation.

That's a dreadful attempt at conveying a local accent in written form. At first, I thought it was one of the Scandinavian languages.

I've had his "Retriever" and "Time Being" albums since I heard him do "Hands of Time" on the Scrubs soundtrack. He's disgracefully underrated.

Def not St Helens or any further afield. Widnes, I reckon. Oh, and love, "vagina" is not a classier way of saying "pussy". It's a truly fuckin dreadful word. Next time use "clout".