Cloud

Not at all, I like it. It feels positive.

I've just stuck it on again in the background, it's not bad

Much the same way that the only reason there are Russian citizens there is because Russia happened to swan in and hand out passports to everyone, not because they're actually Russian.

It's a hugely controversial point to make that they're not Russians - the vast majority of Ossetians live in Russia, the South-Ossetians want to be part of Russia and they definitely don't want to be part of Georgia. So while they're not ethnically Russian - they would likely be far better off as part of North Ossetia than the current status quo.

The sensible thing in all of this would be to actually hand South Ossetia over to the Russians in exchange for a decent payment.

Having your band as your living should come around from people liking the music you made, not you making music specifically to sell cd's and tickets.

But isn't the object of every band to sell cd's and tickets, ultimately? Even where a band doesn't care less - if they can't sell tickets, then they won't be asked to play gigs. And if they can't sell CD's, then they're making less money for themselves.

How many people are in bands that truly do not care less about getting to play gigs?

EU citizens coming over is largely outwith their control. The main thing they have probably done is made it so easy for illegal immigrants to come over

Easy? Okay, let's look at the reality.

Probably one of the biggest things against illegal immigration was the introduction of the juxtaposed border controls at Dover - essentially, you go through British passport control in France, and French controls in Dover. So that's the first line of defence - if you don't have a valid passport to get into the UK to begin with, then you're not even getting on the ferry.

Then let's consider that the ferry ports are very, very well guarded, as is the Channel Tunnel at Coquelles. You can't just jump a fence - the security is tight, and the French don't take much nonsense from the way of the immigrant communities in the Pas-de-Calais region.

I haven't even mentioned security controls, but these are ridiculously tight in some respects - if you've been through Dover recently, you'll know exactly how tough these are. Effectively, if you're chosen to be searched, you have to drive into a garage, upon which the doors shut. You're then thoroughly searched on your person and in your car - and your documents are again checked. You're questioned as to what you're doing, etc etc - basically, you don't have a hope in hell of getting an illegal immigrant on the ferry.

I'm led to believe that other ports are toughening up too, particularly Ramsgate.

And why don't we talk about how the BIA has been removing vast amounts of people from the UK - and not with a softly, softly touch either.

And obviously, there's the part you've ignored where the new rules are coming into place concerning the sponsorship of visas and assorted punishments for breaking the rules.

If anything, we're toughening up our borders at the time when 21 EU countries have taken down their controls with each other - with a few non-EU countries as part of this.

So...how have they made it easy, hmm?

I was joking by the way.

Oh, how stupid of me.

I'm not an ale drinker at all, I hate the stuff (except Guinness), I'm a poncy fizzy lager drinker, and proud.

Good man. I drank four pints of some real ale stuff at our uni's beer festival, and felt horrible for days It was free though, so...can't complain.

Not being a cunt to anyone means being well behaved.

If you'r not a bastard, everyone will like you and you won't be classed as liking kids.

That's a bit of a simple view of the world, isn't it?

I can understand if you stay forever in the tea boy job, with no ambition to be anything better. But you're bound to trample on a few toes on the way up, and if your entire career can be ruined because some disgrunted person decided to tell the police that you liked child porn - is that really a good thing?

I'll be honest, I expected this to be total garbage.

But this is really different. The guitar is nice and warm, but the vocals are really intriguing. The songs have shitloads of character, particularly 'Ah Jus Wanna Partay' - it's absolutely bizzare, yet I've listened to it twice quite happily.

It really sounds like you sat down with a guitar and a keyboard, strummed random chords, pressed random keys and sang the first things that came into your head. And that's not a bad thing - it sounds authentic? I'd love to see you live, actually.

I wouldn't mind hearing more. All the stuff has a great vibe to it, don't lose it!

Thumbs up

I've just spent a rather enjoyable ten minutes just clicking round this site.

RETROBRICK - the home of vintage and rare mobile phones

Anyone know anyone that owned one of these bricks?

They're the two best teams, so it makes sense!

That's the theory, but I get the feeling that because they've got better squads, they can afford to rotate players - whereas teams like Villa and Hull will tend to play their best players as much as possible.

We'll see, we'll see...

I don't normally feel the need to swear, but fucking hell. This is clearly beyond a joke - the CRB system is flawed enough as it is, without having allegations being included in the checks.

Malicious gossip could cost you your job | The Register

Scary stuff.

This is true to an extent. It will help get around some throttling and traffic shaping methods. But it won't help with others. For example one major ISP recently admitted to throttling all traffic not on port 80.

Who was that?

It'll be interesting to see if BT's 21CN will be merely catching up with demand, or if it'll provide a massive increase in capacity well beyond current demands.

It's only one week, dude. Most of us will be so woeful that we can be caught!

Haha, I hope so...though I fear I've got an over-reliance on Man Utd and Chelsea players

Balls, didn't notice this thread until now.

Joined the league, now I'll face a mountain to climb .

2nd in the group should be easily obtained, and thankfully, there's a lot of weak teams that we could potentially end up against - Russia is really the only team that I can see being a serious threat amongst the second seeds. I actually quite fancy the chances of Burley in pulling off a shock and beating Holland at home, but I dare say they'll crush us on goal difference alone in the grorup.

It has to be said, I don't like the format of these qualifiers - the system used for Euro 2008 was far preferable, as it was a straightforward race to qualify. I don't see why they couldn't have done the same again - 53 teams, 13 places...so you could have 7 groups, top two qualify from each group, except the two worst performing 2nd place teams who would playoff for that final spot. As it stands, the current system places far, far too much weight on obtaining a result against minnows and (I think) ruins the qualifying race as it lessens the competition.

Just thought i'd post a wee update. My flat has now been sold to the first person who viewed it for full asking. They only viewed it cause there was guitars in the pictures

Excellent luck...bet you're glad?

Immigration is fine to a point but what the Labour government has done is a fucking joke.

What have they done wrong? We've managed to steal vast amounts of highly qualified Eastern Europeans (with more to come once we open up to Romania/Bulgaria), a lot of whom will have professional qualifications and degrees - for instance, it's normal for Poles to have at least a Masters degree. Even some of the Poles here doing menial jobs will have ridiculously good qualifications, I know of one particular pisshead that works in a factory, yet has a degree and vast work experience in electronics. The reason he can't work in electronics here? The government cut ESL funding quite dramatically, and so it's quite difficult for them to find the time to learn outside of a structured environment.

The big mistake Labour made was opening up the labour markets without making any sort of plan to expand public services, and in some cases, woefully misjudging things. It's true enough that there's schools struggling to cope with an influx of children that don't speak English - but that's the government's fault, not anyone else's.

I think the photo was taken before the games started.

Even better, not only did they make themselves look foolish before the games, but the Chinese are making them look stupid at the games, too

Why the fuss? China are miles in front in the medal table at the minute...does anyone care if a bunch of sour graped Spanish types are making a gesture or not?

Jesus, this mix is awful. Music is supposed to grab you in some sort of way, at least in my opinion. But this doesn't grab you at all, the mix is way too muddy and cluttered to be much good, and to be brutally honest, sounds like the person that did the mix was either in a hurry or couldn't be arsed.

i didnt say they weren't intelligent...i just said they were dicks.

It's okay, I'm sure they think you're a dick as well, so everyone's happy

this means i'm cool. cool! oh and yeah, RSAMD/any drama school the world over pupils are mostly dickzzzz.

Any drama school? Get a grip, some of the most intelligent people I know are drama students. I know a guy that could've (with his results) gone to any university he wanted, but he went and did an ND in Performing Arts (and followed it through to degree level) instead. I saw his workload, and they were effectively expected to be in college four full days a week, plus perform and rehearse on their off days.

But don't worry Ewan, you'll never be an actor Are you actually just jealous that they have talent and have to bloody well work at it, though?

The Tunnels is the best venue in Aberdeen, it'd be interesting to see what they did with Drummonds. I suggest a refurbishment and new clientele.

What kind of clientele, though? It's on Belmont Street - you're not going to attract a sophisticated, cultured crowd there on a Friday night, are you?

Don't mean to rub salt, but they were indeed great days! Most Saturday afternoons were spent at Codona's with a tenner's worth of 20p coins going into machines like Double Dragon, P.O.W., Vigilante and Vendetta. I could complete Double Dragon with 40p once I'd sussed that cheeky elbow move on the big cunts you couldn't knee in the face.

My parents used to have a Vigilante machine in the shop they ran for a wee while..can't remeber for the life of me what the other machines in the shop were, but Vigilante sticks out in my mind. I play it nowadays mind, and it's impossible But the machines used to pay the rent on the shop alone, which tells you how much of a draw they were.

Rainbow Islands will always remain one of my favourite arcade games, along with Final Fight. I first completed Final Fight in Spain on holiday, and Haggar is still as mean as he always was

I actually think the demise of the arcade game is the reason that so many arcades closed down or are now struggling nowadays (anyone visited Stonehaven's arcade recently? dearie me...) - no-one really wants to pay a pound for 3/4 minutes on a machine.

Bad news for Scotland, a good run from Rangers and Celtic this year could possibly have got us into 9th place on the coefficient list and with it, an extra place in the UEFA cup for 2010

But still, what the hell were Rangers doing against a bunch of Hearts rejects?