Neil

If we're talking about cattle then they would never have existed as we know them today if it wasn't for our "farming and enslaving them". Same goes for sheep. Look up animal husbandry. They exist to serve a purpose and wouldn't exist if it wasn't for man. As a species, we're meant to eat meat and through evolution our bodies have actually become more dependent on meat in recent times, not less. That's why your appendix, for example, is a redundant organ now. There is a food chain and the last time I checked we're at the top of it. Cows are tasty and I'm going to keep eating them. Lots of them. And I'm going to keep drinking their milk. I don't care how they're slaughtered. I find it rather amusing that people are quick to get outraged over how we treat animals yet don't seem to show the same outrage and compassion over how we treat each other. I say lets get our own house in order before we start to worry about what we're doing with our domesticated animals. Priorities please people.

I hope you don't have a medical emergency anytime soon then as presumably you would be telling the NHS paramedics and ambulance service to get lost because you're a BUPA member.

Consider it done. Take the stupid football rivalries to other forums elsewhere please. I'm happy for people to talk about football in this forum, but not rubbish like this.

People may kid, but I can confirm there is a number of active users on this web site with Aberdeen Journals e-mail addresses. Oh, and Northsound ones as well...

Congratulations!

It's still illegal though. Hence why some of the firms that build PCs with OS X running on them are being sued by Apple (Apple Sues Psystar - Tom's Hardware). Should make an interesting court case though as I don't think anything like this has got as far as court before.

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As an aside, this is something we've tried to deal with carefully on the web site as unfortunately the threats of legal action do occasionally come across our way. For those interested, the disclaimer the web site has (and what you have all agreed to accept by registering on the site) removes any liability the web site (i.e. me) has for the content of anything posted either publically or privately anywhere on the site. We'll remove specific content if asked, but that's normally as far as we would go. It's the author of the post or private message that is wholly responsible for it's content. We could be forced to handover what information we have recorded for a specific member (IP addresses, e-mail address, location etc). This would be required if they needed to be properly indentified in order for legal action to be taken out against them by a third party. But we would only ever do this under the instruction of the relevant authorities and with the relevant warrant issued by court. In all the years this web site has been online this has yet to ever happen, thankfully. Please do be careful with what you post about other people and organisations though. People can and do get taken to court for things like defamation because of making posts on message boards, news groups, social networks etc. Although you might think you are doing it anonymously, there really is no such thing. An IP address and an e-mail address are more than enough to identify a person if needs be. Anyway, good thread this. Back to the topic at hand...

It's really not looking good for him now: BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Hartson critical after surgery I'm always shocked at how quickly cancer can spread.

Sorry guys, had to remove the image links - they were simply too big.

That orchestral version is actually called "Requiem for a Tower" and was originally performed for the The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers movie trailer. It's used all over the place now. If you like that then check out the soundtrack he did for the movie Pi (which is more electronica based) or if you like the more orchestral style then the soundtrack he composed for The Fountain is awesome (he collaborated with Mogwai on a few of the tracks on that soundtrack). I'm a big fan of soundtracks as well. Some composers I highly recommend - Thomas Newman, Cliff Martinez, Mark Isham, John Murphy and Hans Zimmer.

Technically speaking they should be forced to if they are going to apply anti-trust laws consistently. But like Le Stu says, people only seem to get upset when you've got a massive market share like Microsoft has. That doesn't matter 'cos Linux and Firefox are both open source. No-one is making money from them.

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Just had a thought. I believe because of the result of the EU anti-trust investigations into Microsoft that Windows 7 won't come bundled with Internet Explorer if you buy it in the EU when it's released later this year. Presumably that means Google wouldn't be able to bundle the Chrome browser with their Chrome OS. Something that I suspect is going to be rather difficult for them to do.

Good luck to them I say. It's going to inherit the same problems as all other Linux distros - namely poor hardware support. If they can overcome that, then great, Microsoft will have some decent competition. I'm not holding my breath though. I think this might go the way of BeOS eventually.

I used these guys when I was up in Aberdeen. Very down to Earth and friendly (even though their web site makes them look huge and corporate - they aren't): City Financial: independent advisers for mortgages, pensions and investments.

I'm in the same boat with Orange and currently have the N82 (it's alright - nothing to shout about though - the lack of apps and small screen is annoying). My plan now is to hold off until next month when Orange (along with T-Mobile) will start offering the new HTC Hero (HTC - Products - HTC Hero - Overview) which looks very nice indeed. It's Google Android based and so has a lot applications available for it out-of-the-box.

I should point out that I'm still trying to come up with some more benefits for being a Supporter (and Sponsor for that matter - they get the same perks) so you get more bang for your buck. Suggestions welcome!

The short answer to this is nothing to be quite honest. We've never really pushed to get new members be it through advertising or whatever (I think the last advertisement we had was in the Granite City Guide - and that a freebie). Primarily due to the lack of having the finance available to do it properly and the free time to actually do it. Ideas of what we could possibly do are always welcome though. Thankfully, through various enhancements made to the web site over the years, it is now very well indexed by the various search engines and so it hasn't proved hard for people (both old and new) to stumble onto the site. As always, I've got various improvements in the pipeline that I hope will attract new members and retain those who already use the site. This week I've actually been working on putting in a new events listing system that will completely replace the Calendar (What's On?) section of the web site in the next week or so. There will also be a dedicated Classified Ads system being put in that will replace the Trading Post forums. vBulletin v4.0 is also on the horizon for release later this year and that will no doubt introduce lots of new enhancements and features across most sections of the web site. What would you like to know exactly? In the last month we received 539,609 page views made by 76,068 visitors of whom spent an average of 7 minutes on the web site. Bandwidth used in the last month was 12GB. Overall this is probably a little down from the same period a year ago, but I've been saying that this web site reached it's plateau a good couple of years or so ago now and people are more likely to spend their time on social networks (Facebook, Bebo, Twitter etc) rather than online forums. I expect the traffic to continue to slowly decline. Yes, it has been sustaining itself for the last few years or so through using a mix of advertising revenue from local sponsors, Google Adsense and members who subscribe to the Supporters scheme. The surplus revenue we make simply sits in a bank account and is used for renewing/paying for software licences and for making up any shortfalls we may have on the occasional month. We actually had a couple of tough months earlier this year thanks to the credit crunch as we pay the web hosting bill in US dollars and the pound's weakness against this caused the monthly bill to go shooting up. Things appear to have stabilised again now though, thankfully. I'm sure the staff will be very pleased to hear your kind comments. I only wish I could spend more time on the site myself in order to help justify some of this praise for myself! Very much so (see my answer above).

This is on my rather long To-Do list at the moment. I'm trying to get the link between the calendar and the event forum put back in place so an event just needs posted in the calendar. This then ensure the title of the events is the forum is consistent.

I thought we were heading towards deflation, not inflation.

Exercise caution everyone. I've been privately contacted and informed that the original poster is John Cardno who has a reputation as a ticket fraudster: John Cardno - Scam Tickets For Music Festivals? | Festivalz I've no evidence of this myself and so I'll leave this thread open for now.

I can't see how BP can currently have confidence in Bond because they are no longer using their services until this investigation (that they have initiated as opposed to Bond starting it) is concluded. They are still using helicopters to ferry their contractors, but using different operators. It's worth bearing in mind that when the other Bond chopper safely ditched in the sea a couple of months ago BP didn't perform any such investigation - even though the outcome of that incident could have easily been as disastrous as this. For Bond's sake I hope the root cause of all this isn't a maintenance failure of some kind. An article about this has now popped up on the P&J for those interested: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1162652

BP annouced yesterday that they will be conducting their own thorough review of Bond's operations. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

BP have said they won't be using Bond helicopters for the next wee while at least and Bond have grounded their Super Puma fleet.