basshedz2

Seconded, although it does depend what you want. They didn't have anything we liked (and could afford - although that doesn't seem to be a likely problem in this case!) when I was looking for my missus. We went to Leslie Cass in town (opposite the town hall, on the road leading to the library) and I found them to be excellent - really friendly and helpful, even amidst all the indecision!

Best post on this thread so far ...whatever form taxation takes we shouldn't forget what it's there for..to pay for utilities and services we all use or have the opportunity to use. Many of us have benefitted in the past from the social agenda developed by successive post war governments and I for one don't object to paying now into a system to which I've been a beneficiary, whether that be income, council or a local tax...it should always be about someones ability to pay. The 'unfairness' in the present system is that people who choose to live in big houses aren't necessarily on big incomes, they also might not be the biggest users of local services, so for this reason I too would support some form of community taxation in preference, not based on property. Seconded!

In my experience with XP its the partition you just deleted! If you use gparted/partition magic/etc then you should be able to get it to display the sizes of the partitions on the disk. You should be able to work it out from there (if you know how big the primary partition is). Be careful - I wasn't joking when I said it was the one I'd just deleted! (It was one of those "oh ****!" moments)

Your bank will use an SSL connection between their website and your computer. This basically provides strong encryption that makes eavesdropping or other interception of traffic impossible (or at least very very very difficult!). For example, my bank uses 256 bit AES encryption. From the IETF RFC: "It is conjectured that AES-256 provides adequate security even against adversaries that possess the ability to construct a quantum computer that works on 256 or more quantum bits. No such computer is known to exist; its feasibility is an area of active speculation and research." It is much more likely that you details have been compromised by a keylogging virus, so you should perform a thorough virus scan using something like Avast Antivirus. Not all anti-virus programs are created equal, and Avast is highly recommended (and free!). I wouldn't necessarily trust that your computer is clean. There exist virii in the wild that may not have been identified yet, there exist Rootkits that are very difficult to detect, etc.

Your money will go quite a bit further in Woodseats than in Crookes or Nether Edge. As you mentioned, I'd give Crookes a miss due to the high student population (you said you want somewhere a little quieter). Nether Edge is lovely, but ideally you want to be away from the Abbeydale Road/Empire Road end (again, especially if your looking for somewhere quieter) and your money certainly wont go so far there. I currently live in the Meersbrook/Norton area and I'd thoroughly recommend it. It's fairly quiet (with mostly families living here) and there are two lovely parks close by - Meersbrook Park and Graves Park. The public transport links from Norton aren't great but from Meersbrook and Woodseats they're a bit better. From Woodseats you have a wide selection of buses towards town (25/25a/53/75/76) and then buses from town towards the Hallamshire. I don't think the public transport links from Nether Edge to the Hallamshire would be much better. If you want to investigate the public transport links further, then the SYPTE website has a journey planner: http://www.travelsouthyorkshire.com/ HTH

It's the IP address of the router, and was either 192.168.1.1 (most likely) or 192.168.0.1 (less likely). You'll probably also need an administrator username and password for the router. It should allow you to access all the router settings from your web browser. Also just seen this page: http://www.broadbandwatchdog.co.uk/talktalk-broadband.php It has a load of customer reviews for different ISPs.

Do you mean something like Verfied by Visa? Mastercard also have something similar. If so, you're not paying through Natwest, but you do add a second factor of authentication to your transaction. Two factor authentication makes internet shopping much safer (unless you do something silly like having an extremely weak password for the verification ...). If you have a Visa or Mastercard it is definitely worth enrolling in these schemes - i think its usually done automatically if you shop with amazon (or other big online retailers).

An average mp3 is approximately 3-5MB, so that would give you about 50 MP3 downloads. It would be enough to surf the web and check email, but thats about it.

The netgear powerline equipment was a bit overpriced when I bought my powerline adapters - you're basically paying for the netgear name. I bought these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000SO94FA when we couldn't get a wireless signal in our attic, and they're excellent! They're completely transparent to the network so its exactly like having your computer connected to the router, and the connection speeds are (potentially) much better than wireless. However, if I was to buy again I'd go for the AV models (with 200Mbps) so that I could stream video around the house better. http://www.solwise.co.uk/net-powerline-av-push.htm More information here: http://www.homeplugs.co.uk/default.html Reviews I read before I bought seemed to say that you want either the Solwise, Netgear or Devolo adapters (with Devolo being the most expensive). Apparently some of the other (cheaper) ones are prone to breaking. HTH

Cyclone, What was the problem with serving media over your home network with the NAS server you had? And what NAS server was it? I'm currently thinking of getting a NAS box to stream stuff around the house, so am just interested to learn what problems you encountered. Cheers

7.04 is Feisty Fawn. I'm currently running Feisty Fawn Ubuntu at work and Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) at home. I prefer the look of the gnome desktop to KDE (at the moment anyway - I'm waiting to see what KDE 4.0 is like ...), but when I finally get around to tidying up my home computer I'm going to run Xubuntu with the XFCE desktop. I was running it for a while from a live CD and I think the interface/desktop looks really good! I have a windows/ubuntu dual boot on my work computer but I hardly ever use windows anymore. The only thing I actually need windows for is when i get emailed word documents (which, despite all the good work thats been put in, OO just doesn't handle right), and I am now running a windows virtual machine for stuff like that. If you don't need windows for anything more computationally intensive than Word (and you have a decent PC) I'd highly recommend the VM approach. See here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsXPUnderQemuHowTo It's also really cool!

My experience with the sky plus package has been good. We also have the 8 meg broadband, phone, and the tv package with 6 basic mixes (everything but sport and movies). Sky appear to have started offering a catch up TV type service, but it's no where near as good as the Virgin one. In fact, that's the only thing i miss about Virgin. In general the Sky TV package is much better than the one we got from Virgin - and the box freezes up a lot less than our Virgin box used too. As far as I'm aware, the Sky plus service is now free - although they used to charge a tenner a month for it - and it is awesome! I really like the whole integrated TV recorder service and it is really easy to use. The broadband is ok. It drops out occasionally, but the speed seems pretty good usually. I do think that the cable broadband service from virgin was better, but for checking email and surfing the net the sky service is fine. I don't really do much in the way of downloading, but what i have done seems ok - it is capped at 40GB a month though. I have nothing really to say about the phone service, except we have to pay BT line rental on top of the £26 a month Sky subscription.

Are these playing fields not owned by The University Of Sheffield, rather than Sheffield Hallam?

Try looking here: http://www.lease-advice.org/ When we got our leasehold bill, there was an offer to buy the freehold with it. I think it was £600+ though and our lease is only £1 something a year, so i don't think we'll be in hurry to buy it.

Will it be televised?

I live at the top of Meersbrook park, and think the area is fantastic. It takes me less than 15 minutes or so to walk to Woodseats, it's quiet, and it has a real community spirit. I have never seen any incidents around the park (unless you mean teenagers hanging out - *gasp*). We actually liked the area so much that after renting for a couple of years we bought a house there. I like Woodseats too, but I think the quiet and lack of traffic in Meersbrook suits me better.

No, I think you'll find that there are few virii and exploits for *nix based systems because *nix actually has a decent security model. That and the fact that OS level exploits are usually identified before mass release (you know, since you can see the source code and all).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1068625.stm This study shows that the use of cannabis can impair driving ability, but not to the same extent as driving whilst under the influence of alcohol. Previous studies also suggest that driving whilst tired is also worse than driving under the influence of cannabis: That said, it's obviously a stupid idea to drive whilst stoned/drunk/whatever! Is this not because testing for drugs is now more common?

We had this we bought our house. What the estate agents really want is the bit in the surveyors report that says what the market value of the house is. I guess if the surveyor says its worth the amount you're paying for it then you may have difficulty getting money knocked off. If you can, try and talk direct to the vendor. Hope this helps, b

We've just moved house and (finally) unpacked, so we have a load of Pickford's cardboard packing boxes available if anybody wants them. PM me if you're interested. Alex

I don't think people are suggesting that someone has found a cure for cancer and kept it quiet! I think it is more likely that the big pharma companies don't direct as much funding into finding a cure as they do into finding treatments.

The Harley up by the University. I used to meet a few friends for lunch there a few years ago and the food was ok (never spectacular, but that wasn't really what I was expecting). We went recently and it was awful! I'd rather go and eat at McDonalds!

Surely one of the best reasons to use a reputable mortgage broker, as they should know which banks to apply to and what they are likely to lend you.

There aren't any! But then there also aren't any rookie drivers in recent years that have gone straight into a potential championship winning car. Thats not to take anything away from a fantastic achievement, after all he's beaten the 2x world champion in the same equipment (), and Felipe Massa in the Ferrari. And nearly beat Kimi - who, along with Alonso, is one of the highest rated drivers in F1

I totally agree - my mum always said "if you cant say something nice ..." Denigrating the other parties isnt going to make me vote for someone - its just like saying "well we're ****, but everyone else is worse"!