kinetic

They are called "Datasettes", I'm sure you could get a PC to Cassette Port connector (I'm sure I saw one on the internet, but I'm having trouble finding it now so maybe I dreamt it! They play an audio file which you send to the cassette port). When searching for that I came across this wiki page, which says "The cassette port of the C128 is identical to the C64's. The VIC-20 and various PET-models have the same port regarding the pin assignment, but different internals, since there is no processor port in these computers." (TBH: I thought the VIC20 models were exactly the same!). The datasette and the power brick were the main points of failure on C64s, so they are more expensive than other parts, they seem to be about £15 on ebay (which is about the same as a C64, without datasette of course, would cost). Here's a wiring diagram if you're up for a project!

The other day in Game they were acting like they had them in stock, notices in the windows with loads of different packages and a sign saying "Hurry, limited stocks". There was a line of Game staff at the front of the store (they used advertising boards to hoard people to them), who I bypassed as I was looking to buy something else, but I overheard lots of ****** off people who had queued under the assumption that they were in stock (TBH, I actually thought they were in stock from the way they'd laid the shop out, the adverts in the windows and the stacks of empty boxes everywhere). They were taking deposits for pre-order (with no guaranteed date). I heard one guy say something along the lines "it could be any day, some people haven't been in today so that pushes everyone forward a day", which makes it sound imminent, but I'd be very surprised if they got them by Christmas. And tbh, it's not entirely guaranteed that Game high street stores will be open after Christmas (they barely made it through New Year last time, this year should be better with the launch of new consoles, but even so, it's one hell of a risk!), so you'll have to excuse me for not giving you any money for a console you won't be giving me until next year! (when the packages will be better, and the console will be cheaper)

I know you shouldn't laugh at people less fortunate than yourself but THAT is possibly the funniest post I've ever read on this forum. I was in stitches. Someone sitting behind me asked what was so funny, so I showed them and THEY started laughing uncontrollably too! We were both in stitches! Comedy gold!

My partner was robbed by two women at that Morrisons store a few years ago. We reported it to the police, the police asked US to ring Morrisons (isn't that err, their job??) and ask if they had any CCTV. It turned out they did (!!!), they'd watched her enter her pin in and then stole her purse from the pram she was pushing (low lifes!) and they then used the cash machines outside. We got a call a couple of hours later from the police who said they couldn't use the footage (from the cash machines) because it was too low definition. We rang the store, it turned out they hadn't even been to check the footage (they just rang and talked to the manager, which is who we were speaking to). I mean; they could have at least gone to store and looked at the footage and checked to see if they recognised the faces? No? Apparently not! The police (on this occasion) were absolutely useless. We claimed it back on the house insurance, which turned out to be a big mistake; the next time we went to register for house insurance the price had gone up by more than the amount we had claimed! I know already. I'm going to get called a liar and this story isn't true, and this doesn't ring true, and blah, blah, blah. I have to say though, we found the store quite helpful. It was the police who we felt had let us down (I'm not actually sure they did ANYTHING, apart from give us a crime number. Even after we'd done all the running around for them).

Who do they owe? I was under the impression that local authorities aren't allowed to take out loans (there have been several court cases where banks and other financial institutions have been left up the proverbial creek without a paddle after lending to a local authority, or selling financial services to a local authority which the courts subsequently found to be disguised loans).

As you mentioned connecting them to the PC one thing you need to watch for is that a lot of the headphones will either come with a Dolby surround sound processing unit "built in" (as a box on the cable - with one of the optical cables to connect to an optical output), or sold separately as an add-on (as is often the case with Turtle Beach headsets, although I think at least one of their headsets come with it built in). These things actually sound pretty fantastic on the Xbox, PS3 and for watching Dolby (AAC) surround sound encoded movies, Blu-Rays or DVDs on your PC. When you get to PC gaming things start get a little more tricky! I fell into this exact trap (buying a DSS box for a PC). The problem is that very few games on the PC are encoded with the compatible Dolby Digital surround (as they assume gamer's will connect to an audio receiver or connect speakers independently using the multiple jacks provided on game cards rather than the optical out - I think it's basically a licencing issue, they have to pay a few pence per unit sold and very few people require than functionality so they don't include it in many games). So very few games come encoded with Digital Dolby 5.1 which is sent over optical (the ones that do are often console conversions, as practically all 360 and PS3 games send Dolby over optical, so the programmers don't need to "needlessly" add it in!). It was just my luck that the first game I tried (I think it was either Sleeping Dogs or Just Cause 2), on my newly arrived Christmas present (Turtle Beach headset and Ear-Force DSS - Dolby Digital 5.1/7.1 Surround Sound set) DID support Digital Dolby on the PC! This was rather unfortunate as it led to much confusion as I was blown away by the sound, then naturally tried a succession of other games to be left totally, well, not blown away. They just sounded over-bassy and distorted! It was only after a couple of days that I noticed (when I started a movie) that a light lights up when the source is Dolby Digital. I then played around a bit and noticed it only lit up on a couple of games and just stayed blank for the rest. Much head scratching later I took to the internet and it appears you need a sound card capable of Dolby Digital Live processing for it to change the surround sound processed in-game to the optical output for games which don't output DSS. A few motherboard with Realtek sound support it onboard (I have an Asus motherboard with Realtek and sadly mine doesn't), otherwise you're looking at buying a new sound card with the "Dolby Digital Live" feature which, as the name suggests, encodes Dolby Digital in real time (Turtle Beach themselves used to make one, but for some strange reason no longer do). They're not cheap! The Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express Dolby Digital Sound Card is one such card for example and will set you back around £80! Confusingly many sound cards say they support Dolby Digital (pretty much all of them in fact, even the really cheap ones), this is different to Dolby Digital Live, which is the feature you require to run a DSS unit! Like I said, you'll find the occasional PC game that does support Dolby Digital out of the box for these units to pick up Dolby Digital Surround (over optical output), but they are rare. If you take away the DSS attachment and just plug the normal headset into the audio out jack you get a much better sound quality (on games that aren't DSS). So my DSS box is now permanently attached to the Xbox (which it sounds great on btw! It makes a real improvement over just using the headset).

Your original post made no sense to me. Is the laptop asking for a password before it starts to load Windows (assuming it is running Windows), or is it booting into Windows and then asking for a user account password?

There are (despite what many people believe) 2 types of HDMI cable (and I'm talking about the actual physical cable, not the connectors or the HDMI standards) - category 1 and category 2. Category 2 cable has been tested to have a higher capacity for data throughput than category 1 cable (or to put it in layman's terms: think of a pipe which allows water to travel through it - the larger the pipe, the more water can flow through it. Cat 1 cable is a small pipe. Cat 2 is a big fat pipe). What difference does that make? Cat 1 cables (theoretically*) only have enough throughput to carry video up to 1080i (but will often manage 1080p over short runs without problem), Cat 2 cables have enough throughput that they are guaranteed to run 1080p at 60Hz (and a whole lot more - including 3D, 100mbps ethernet, Audio Return Channel, etc). Rather confusingly the category of cable used wasn't enforced until HDMI v 1.4, although ALMOST all 1.3 cables are category 2 - if it says "high speed" on the packaging, it's category 2! (this is what generally causes confusion on forums and other places who insist you need HDMI 1.4 for 3D tvs, that's not exactly true; you need a category 2 cable, which you're almost certain to get on a HDMI 1.3 cable but are absolutely guaranteed to get on HDMI 1.4 cable!). It probably doesn't matter either way as you're using a DVD player (rather than a Blu-Ray player), but as a general rule when buying cables the thing you need to watch for is that the cable is HDMI 1.3 and "high speed" or "category 2" (they both mean the same thing) or that its a HDMI 1.4 cable (the packaging on a 1.4 cable may not mention that it is "high speed" as it's a given. i.e., they all are!). As indicated above, the price of the cable makes little difference, you can buy £1 high speed category 2 cables and they won't make the slightest bit of difference to buying a branded expensive cable. * - to confuse matters even further; cables are tested to run at a theoretical minimum (not maximum), so it's entirely possible to have a category 1 cable with the same throughput as a category 2 cable, it just hasn't been tested to category 2 standards! So don't rush out and replace your category 1 cable with a category 2 cable if it works as you expect it to work!

I have a small problem on a recently upgraded server. It seems Microsoft have changed the way it handles folders. In past versions of Windows if you had a folder structure such as C:/FolderA/FolderZ and you then tried to copy the folder C:/FolderB/FolderZ (The actual "FolderZ" folder itself, not the contents of the folder) into C:/FolderA - windows would warn you that FolderZ already exists at that location and ask if you were sure you want to continue (even in the contents of the two folders were different). Now, however, it will just allow you to merge the two folders (and only pops up the warning if one or more of the files in the two folders have exactly the same name and extension). I just checked (out of interest) and this is also now the case in Windows 8. Even stranger, by default, it allows you to do the same thing into a network share without warning (with write access of course), even merging into a folder which wasn't originally created by you! For reasons that are long and boring (so I'll avoid explaining them) this is a bit of a nuisance for me. I could employ various work arounds, but in an ideal world I'd just like to revert to the previous way which Windows handled this situation (by popping up a box that warned you that a folder with that name already exists in the location you're trying to copy to and asks you if your sure you want to continue, even where the contents of the two folders are different). Does anyone know if there's a simple fix for this or perhaps a registry hack? I would have assumed that it would be a local security policy (but if it is, I've missed it). Any ideas?

Went past this earlier. Must have been just after whatever it was occurred because the tram in front of us pulled up as it couldn't get past the ambulance on the road (other cars and the bus I was on were overtaking the tram as the ambulance was just slightly on the tram track). Police there too. I only noticed one person on the pavement (kind of opposite the chippy on City Road) with the ambulance crew attending to them. I never noticed the car embedded in the shop. TBH I just thought someone had slipped on the icy pavement or something, but further up City Road (just after the cross roads towards Intake) there was a couple of police cars and they'd taped off part of the road around another car. No idea if this car was also involved or if it was totally unrelated (it's a good half mile or so away from the first incident so may have been coincidental). Anyway, hope all involved are okay. It looked like a serious incident just judging from the amount of people who were standing around the area looking concerned. Edit: Actually, I'm not even sure if that car is embedded in the shop (on the picture in the link above), maybe it's just parked in front of the shop? Only had a quick look at your link before posting and a glance can be deceiving!

Depending on how well compressed (or not) the media is (and various other factors - distance from router, channel interference, etc) you may struggle with 1080p over Wifi. If you have an old(ish) PC knocking around you can add a graphics card with HDMI (£25-30 - nearly all cards carry sound over HDMI, but double check!) and a remote control/USB reciever for about £10, some silent fans and add either XBMC or Plex for playback. It's also worth considering a second hand Playstation 3, or a new Xbox 360 (don't go with second hand on Xbox - the failure rate is too high), or an Apple TV. All will do what you want and more for round about £100-ish (if you could pick up a PS3 with a knackered drive off ebay you'd get what you need for a song!). There's a XBMC build for the Raspberry Pi (£35). I've never tried it though so can't comment on how well it handles various media. Or maybe you have the option of using a laptop? As for building your own... well, if you're looking for something that will look nice alongside your A/V kit and is silent then "good" and "cheap" probably aren't two words you'll be using together (although, that's subjective I suppose). All of the above solutions will be cheaper (which is why I suggested them as alternatives).

I5K is the best bang for your money now. The only other processor worth considering is the I7-3770K; it costs about £100 more and whilst the base speed of the processor is naturally faster the over-clocking potential of the i5 is now quite notorious. You can quite easily surpass i7 stock speeds with minimal cooling and a fairly basic motherboard (you can do far better if you spend a bit more on decent cooling and a dedicated overclocking board). The best card currently around the £200 mark is the Nvidia GTX 660 Ti. Just make sure you have a decent power supply to power them and not a £15 e-bay special

Just as an alternative: Download iTunes and go on iTunes U. You can access lectures (some video, some audio) and all the learning material from university modules around the world (practically all the big American Universities are on-board: UCLA, Berkley, MIT, Standford, etc.... and quite a few of the British uni's are also now jumping aboard). To be honest, they work best if you have an iPad (well, it does for me anyway. If for no other reason than the anytime/anywhere convenience). But you can also just download them and watch them on your PC/mac. Fancy doing Computer Science at Berkley? Just sign up and the lectures and learning material will be delivered to you as they are released (or as you request if the course has already finished). Not your thing? How about iPad and iPhone Application development at Stanford? or Programming Methodology? Multi-core programming at MIT? Networks and Security at Plymouth? Database Fundamentals at Tennessee State? Computer and Information Sciences at Cornell? XML with Java at Harvard? Introduction to Programing in C at Georgia State? The list is endless... All free! Just don't do what I did and sign up for about 100 courses at once!

At 1080p running a single monitor any (either) of the £150 range graphics cards will kill every game out until the Unreal Engine 4 games start to appear in a year or two (or three, or....). You'd be hard pushed to find a game that a 2 or 3 year old Nvidia 460 couldn't run with most things pushed up at 1080p let alone a 660. The E3 (first ever public) demo of the Unreal 4 engine was run on a I7, SSD, with 16gb of memory and an Nvidia Kepler GTX680 (all overclocked!). That was just 3 minutes long. The next big hardware jump will happen in the next couple of years. There's little point upgrading a gaming PC bought in the past couple of years (unless you run amazing resolutions, multi-monitor or chose badly/skimped when our made your original purchase).

None of the COD games are "graphically intensive". They run on a modified Quake 3 engine (first used in 1998!).