You're either extremely ill informed or a just an idiot.
The EU is fining Microsoft because SUN made a complaint against them which the EU found to be true, since then they have been attempting to make sure Microsoft is conforming to the sanctions the EU laid against them for what they had done.
The EU is not a nation, it is a trade organisation set up to facilitate trade amonst it's member states and takes action against a lot of EU companies.
Microsoft agreed how much it should be charging for it's protocols and then decided to charge a higher amount than the one agreed.
So now that you are aware of the facts I expect not to see any such nonsense posting from you on this matter again.
I was in a similar position to the one you sound as though you're in. When I left school I had no real IT qualifications at all apart from a GCSE and an A-Level and I found myself stuck doing admin jobs in insurance companies and the like which very quickly became extremely boring.
From there I managed to get a job on the out of hours helpdesk of a large outsourcing company with the hopes of using this to working properly in the IT industry.
At this point I think I was fairly lucky in that first of all working nights and weekends left all of us with a lot of free time where we had to answer the phone if it rang but with hours and hours between calls and secondly because the management were very supportive of people taking the initiative and finding solutions to any of the problems we saw around us.
I was able to use the "free time" I had at night to develop a web based CMS system to replace the helpdesks procedures ( which were until then kept in battered folders which no one ever updated and caused no end of problems ). As well as this I read up on the tools we were using in the call centre and wrote some VB apps to use them more efficiently. Having done this I was able to move off the help desk to do more things like this on a permanent basis and then I moved across to administer the telephony system which exposed me to a lot more tools and stuff which I live off to this very day as a consultant.
I was very lucky to find myself in a the sort of situation I was in where I could essentially make up my own job in the way I did and have people provide me with the resources and backing to make a go of it but have a look around and if you see anything you think could be done better spend some time learning about it and then explain to your management how it can be done better and also consider that your company is most likely going to have internal IT sysadmins and stuff to manage it's own systems which is an ideal place to move to because you will also understand the systems from the users point of view.
All the UK needs to do is allow companies registered there the power to build armies, navies and air forces etc and carte blance to take what they like from any countries not specifically our allies and tax them a lot for the priviledge.
Equally I'm not sure that assuming it's a bad idea because you think it's possible that lots more devices may have been discovered without it is such a good stance to take either.
Presumably patents have worked in the past otherwise they wouldn't be so universally accepted so you'd have to show why they have apparently stopped working.
Do you have any reason for this belief? The amount of new hardware constantly being developed might be some indication that they are working well, you could obviously argue that without a comparison to what would have been developed if patents did not exist it's hard to measure that but equally you'd have to back up your argument that no patents are better for innovation than patents with some evidence.
I agree, I think hardware patents seem to work quite well the problem is when you simply try and transfer that model onto something which is inherently different like software.
I have traveled around the world, and every nation is thinking how it can model [intellectual property governance] after the U.S Aparently he hasn't visited the UK or the EU lately then who, as read on./ earlier this week, are moving to specifically prevent software patents.
If I were a betting man, and I bet you I'm not, I'd say he's spoken to people throughout the world who already agree that much tighter intellectual property laws are required who may coincidentally talk a lot to large corporations, many of which may be US based, who would like to protect their profits and don't have any reason to consider the social side of intellectual property legislation.
Also to say that the rest of the world is currently so awestruck with the benefits brought by US intellectual property legislation as it currently is wouldn't appear to be a good reason for suggesting changes to that legislation.
If you believe in God, then you've got a set of morals and a certain philosophy and goal which comes with the belief in God. Not really you don't, if you were to poll everyone who believed in God about their morals, philosophy and goals you'd find they varied enormously on an individual basis. For instance at one point a belief in God allowed you to burn witches whereas it probably doesn't allow this today.
You can just as easily use a set of morals, philospohy and goals by a belief in yourself and your immediate society without any reference whatsoever to mysterious entities whos existence you have no evidence for.
It has never been God who provides your moral code or goals, it has always been society since God doesn't talk to people on an indidiual basis ( on the occasions when it's claimed he does this leads to people starting suicide cults in rainforests ) but his "words" are interpreted by the elders in society and passed on to others as the best method of living which is the exact same thing which would happen if there was no religion and the development of societies with no God based religions backs this up.
What a belief in God or religion does do is promote adherance to moral codes which may not fit in well with the way society is operating at the current time by imposing moral guidelines which may have been valid 2000 years ago but have since become unhelpful to societies development. Inevitably it is religion which changes it's "interpretation of Gods word" to suit the society the religion is operating in rather than the opposite way round which is yet further evidence for where your morals are actually derived from. In cases where religion is in a position to change society to its idea of morals you end up with disfunctional societes such as Afghanistan under the Taleban.
The British environment agency have conducted a study into the declining populations of these birds in the UK.
All you need to do is the reverse of what is suggested in this report, e.g. eliminate all grassland from arable farming areas and they will soon die off.
Personally I don't think you need any sort of belief in God to decide that you want to live a good life, whether you believed that it was God, or cabbages which dictate how you live it makes no difference because at the of the day it's not God and its not cabbages which decide how you live your life it is in fact you and this doesn't change even if you don't believe that God, or cabbages created the universe.
You are right I am intolerant of religious beliefs but I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I'm also intolerant of people who believe it's a good idea to strap bombs to themselves and blow up trains or people who believe that kidnapping young children for sexual purposes is a good idea. I'm sure you're also intolerant of a lot of beliefs which people around the world have.
I don't think people are necessarily stupid for holding religious beliefs, it could be they have been brought up in isolation or are unaware of the scientific developments since biblical times however when people are aware of the alternatives to religious beliefs and still make the choice to ignore rationality then I would say that they are making a stupid decision. Certainly one stupid decision doesn't make someone an idiot but it's more likely to make them an idiot than if they hadn't made a stupid decision.
I don't subscribe to the belief that anything goes, if I see someone about to throw himself off a cliff because of his beliefs then I am going to intervene and explain why his beliefs are wrong.
Can you explain exactly why I should tolerate every belief anyone chooses to subscribe to and why I shouldn't say when I believe that belief is wrong ?
Religion is stupid, a hopeless belief in one of a panetheon of mutally contradictory super beings held together with fictious fairy stories and arcane rituals. I can't think how else you'd describe this if not as stupid.
Whether or not you believe people who fully subscribe to these practices are stupid or not is something you will have to decide for yourself but personally I know which side of the fence I'm on and I don't need any talking bushes to help make my mind up.
I'm sure there are non Christians who share these same concerns about the wii ( the Taleban spring to mind for one ) but you can usally bet that campaigns such as these have far more religious backing than non religious backing.
National security concerns are not a part of the market, and never should be.
If there was a need for corporations to pass on information which may be useful to national organisations then the market would provide one, clearly it's not profitable to do so because as Government entities the national security agencies are far too inefficient and bueraucratic and unable to adjust properly to the marketplace, indeed the government may even have interfered to the extent whereby the government bodies aren't even allowed to pay corporations for useful intelligence !
Perhaps but surely the market would have seen this possibility years and years ago and it if would have worked the market would have employed its market forces and exploited this niche 100% efficiently, as only the market can and produced many fabulous and wonderous things.
The phrase "metaphorically speaking" in that context is simply meaningless, where is the metaphor ? Possibly the submitter meant to say "pretend the two articles I linked to weren't written by same person and that when I said at the beginning of the article that it's interesting when different people have different opinions but it's even more interesting when the same person has two contradictory opinions"
I like a good discussion as much as the next person but if the submitter wanted to discuss the benefits and pitfalls of PThreads vs Windows threads surely he could have just said that and posted to some interesting articles on the subject which would have more authority than two articles written by the same person which look suspiciously similar with just the words Windows and PThreads swapped around.
I think that posting things simply for purposes of creating a heated discussion is called flamebaiting which given the normal robust discussions which gone on in the threads here is really uncessary on the front page of/.
First of all on it's own terms the story makes no sense, the anonymous coward starts off by saying it's interesting when people disagree. He then links to two articles which, as he points out, are written by the same person and then asks who is right. He has just pointed out the opinions are both from the same person and he wants to know who is right, this is just moronic.
Secondly although I know nothing about PThreads or Win threads I can see that both those articles are largely the same with just the terms PThreads and Win threads switched so in one article he is claiming an advantage for one based on what he has stated as the advantages of the other in his other article.
Why is this on the front page, why was the submission accepted in the first place when it's complete nonsense and the most recent post by the author of both articles was in 2006.
I believe it was the US who also promised Pakistan that unless Pakistan was very helpful towards the US and its war on terror and war in Afghanistan that Pakistan would be "bombed back to the stone-age". Perhaps you could attempt to explain what that might have meant and how it's different from what Iran have said ?
Well certainly his ( and Hancocks and others ) detractors are keen to point out that much of what is in the books is complete nonsense and his theories are simply lengthy pillars of supposition based upon foundations of hypothesis sunk into the rock of make believe but that doesn't alter the fact that he definitely must be on to something. The inquiring mind knows to read between the lines !
If there is one thing that Von Daniken has taught me it's that belief has nothing to do with science so no, I don't belive that they are landing pads for alien spaceships. Rather, through following the lengthy scientific daisy chain of Danikens faultless research and evidence I can say that with some ( minimal but necessary ) speculation to join some of the strands together Von Daniken forges an almost unbreakable chain of logic to show how the pyramids are in all likelyhood simply the exposed tips of the remains of a vast and fully operational spaceport which may still be use to this day !!
Now we have proof that there is at least one spaceport fully operating in the Egyptian desert it's surely not beyond belief that there may be others scattered all across the globe ! Indeed anyone with this advanced level of space technology ( built from pure stone no less, something which is way beyond our current level of technology - we can't even build stone aeroplanes yet ! ) it would be more unbelievable to think that there wasn't a vast global network of spaceports, many probably buried deep in the uncharted depths of the ocean are almost certainly still fully operational.
Obviously we aren't yet technologically advanced enough ourselves to read the few signs and clues left by these amazing technological societies which we have just proved must have existed millenia ago to build and operate these spaceports so it's likely that there great stone spaceships remain undetectable to us today as the few surviving members from whatever great catastrophe caught up with their societies continue to battle who nows what forces of evil which may even now be gathering at the edge of the galaxy with our annihalation on their minds !
I won't bother to lay out all the evidence for these simple claims but you may take it from me that I have studied this in some depth and proved in my own mind beyond doubt that it is all 100% verifiable and true. The forces of evil work against me and my work is buried by nameless cabals of scientists and archaelogists so it would be too dangerous to publish the full, mind blowing, facts I have uncovered but I will be releasing a book ( £25 in most good book shops ) and a TV series which will scrape the surface of some of my claims.
Have you read Von Daniken ? I definitely recommend "The Chariots Of The Gods" since he also pretty much single handedly destroys the modern archaelogical conspiracy of silence surrounding the facts about how the Gods used their advanced space-faring technology to live amongst us across the globe until a series of unfortunate yet totally ( locally ) cataclsymic events removed most traces of their presence except for the few totally conclusive tell tale hints left strewn from Machu Pichu to the Egypt for dedicated super-archaelogists like Erik to uncover.
Also Lyall Watson fights the good fight on a number of fronts against an array entrenched and protectionist theories espoused by not only archaeologists but also geologists, physicists and scienctific dogma in general.
Hancock, is the new guy on the block but he is able to link all the good work undertaken by the likes of Von Daniken and Watson and prove that these space-faring super civilizations came from Orion and he can also prove not just the exact date but the exact second, minute, hour and day that they were all wiped out by the various utterly catastrophic yet strangely localised disasters which managed to wipe them out utterly so quickly they didn't even have time to jump back in their spaceships.
Obviously they did have enough time to build a series of enigmatic and utterly conclusive monuments throughout the world to speak to future super-archaelogists such as Mr Hancock, Bauval, Daniken and Watson and tell of the terrible catastrophe they could see coming and how it would wipe them out utterly and how this caused them to gather every member of their super civilisation, complete with houses, buildings and strange alien flying machines directly over the catastrophe, disable their spaceships and entrust the vast learning and knowledge of their super-society to a few, scattered enigmatic encoded monuments.
I can't wait for the next valiant defender of the true science to take up the torch and carry on where Hancock left off.
As a purist from across the pond your plasticy standing about game might produce a load of hugely muscled ogres but for strength, stamina, endurance and speed you'd be better off with rugby players. I just read that your teams are actually 2 seperate teams because your players just can't hack playing the full match ! Incredible, especially since they stop for breaks every 5 seconds and those girlish gossipy chats they always seem to be having.
Whatever you call it, it's not football. Big nancy girls footballers may be but at least they don't need to encase themselves in body armour and helmets to prevent their hair getting messed up.
Rugby is far more exciting than either football or that daft american off-shoot ( not to mention american rounders and american netball or whatever you call them ).
Slashdot Mirror
You're either extremely ill informed or a just an idiot.
The EU is fining Microsoft because SUN made a complaint against them which the EU found to be true, since then they have been attempting to make sure Microsoft is conforming to the sanctions the EU laid against them for what they had done.
The EU is not a nation, it is a trade organisation set up to facilitate trade amonst it's member states and takes action against a lot of EU companies.
Microsoft agreed how much it should be charging for it's protocols and then decided to charge a higher amount than the one agreed.
So now that you are aware of the facts I expect not to see any such nonsense posting from you on this matter again.
I was in a similar position to the one you sound as though you're in. When I left school I had no real IT qualifications at all apart from a GCSE and an A-Level and I found myself stuck doing admin jobs in insurance companies and the like which very quickly became extremely boring.
From there I managed to get a job on the out of hours helpdesk of a large outsourcing company with the hopes of using this to working properly in the IT industry.
At this point I think I was fairly lucky in that first of all working nights and weekends left all of us with a lot of free time where we had to answer the phone if it rang but with hours and hours between calls and secondly because the management were very supportive of people taking the initiative and finding solutions to any of the problems we saw around us.
I was able to use the "free time" I had at night to develop a web based CMS system to replace the helpdesks procedures ( which were until then kept in battered folders which no one ever updated and caused no end of problems ). As well as this I read up on the tools we were using in the call centre and wrote some VB apps to use them more efficiently. Having done this I was able to move off the help desk to do more things like this on a permanent basis and then I moved across to administer the telephony system which exposed me to a lot more tools and stuff which I live off to this very day as a consultant.
I was very lucky to find myself in a the sort of situation I was in where I could essentially make up my own job in the way I did and have people provide me with the resources and backing to make a go of it but have a look around and if you see anything you think could be done better spend some time learning about it and then explain to your management how it can be done better and also consider that your company is most likely going to have internal IT sysadmins and stuff to manage it's own systems which is an ideal place to move to because you will also understand the systems from the users point of view.
I think Brooke would just the fellow to crack down on all this piracy we're experiencing nowadays
All the UK needs to do is allow companies registered there the power to build armies, navies and air forces etc and carte blance to take what they like from any countries not specifically our allies and tax them a lot for the priviledge.
We'd be back on top in no time.
Equally I'm not sure that assuming it's a bad idea because you think it's possible that lots more devices may have been discovered without it is such a good stance to take either.
Presumably patents have worked in the past otherwise they wouldn't be so universally accepted so you'd have to show why they have apparently stopped working.
I agree, I think hardware patents seem to work quite well the problem is when you simply try and transfer that model onto something which is inherently different like software.
If I were a betting man, and I bet you I'm not, I'd say he's spoken to people throughout the world who already agree that much tighter intellectual property laws are required who may coincidentally talk a lot to large corporations, many of which may be US based, who would like to protect their profits and don't have any reason to consider the social side of intellectual property legislation.
Also to say that the rest of the world is currently so awestruck with the benefits brought by US intellectual property legislation as it currently is wouldn't appear to be a good reason for suggesting changes to that legislation.
You can just as easily use a set of morals, philospohy and goals by a belief in yourself and your immediate society without any reference whatsoever to mysterious entities whos existence you have no evidence for.
It has never been God who provides your moral code or goals, it has always been society since God doesn't talk to people on an indidiual basis ( on the occasions when it's claimed he does this leads to people starting suicide cults in rainforests ) but his "words" are interpreted by the elders in society and passed on to others as the best method of living which is the exact same thing which would happen if there was no religion and the development of societies with no God based religions backs this up.
What a belief in God or religion does do is promote adherance to moral codes which may not fit in well with the way society is operating at the current time by imposing moral guidelines which may have been valid 2000 years ago but have since become unhelpful to societies development. Inevitably it is religion which changes it's "interpretation of Gods word" to suit the society the religion is operating in rather than the opposite way round which is yet further evidence for where your morals are actually derived from. In cases where religion is in a position to change society to its idea of morals you end up with disfunctional societes such as Afghanistan under the Taleban.
The British environment agency have conducted a study into the declining populations of these birds in the UK.
r og/findings/sparrow/execsumm.pdf
All you need to do is the reverse of what is suggested in this report, e.g. eliminate all grassland from arable farming areas and they will soon die off.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/resp
Personally I don't think you need any sort of belief in God to decide that you want to live a good life, whether you believed that it was God, or cabbages which dictate how you live it makes no difference because at the of the day it's not God and its not cabbages which decide how you live your life it is in fact you and this doesn't change even if you don't believe that God, or cabbages created the universe.
You are right I am intolerant of religious beliefs but I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I'm also intolerant of people who believe it's a good idea to strap bombs to themselves and blow up trains or people who believe that kidnapping young children for sexual purposes is a good idea. I'm sure you're also intolerant of a lot of beliefs which people around the world have.
I don't think people are necessarily stupid for holding religious beliefs, it could be they have been brought up in isolation or are unaware of the scientific developments since biblical times however when people are aware of the alternatives to religious beliefs and still make the choice to ignore rationality then I would say that they are making a stupid decision. Certainly one stupid decision doesn't make someone an idiot but it's more likely to make them an idiot than if they hadn't made a stupid decision.
I don't subscribe to the belief that anything goes, if I see someone about to throw himself off a cliff because of his beliefs then I am going to intervene and explain why his beliefs are wrong.
Can you explain exactly why I should tolerate every belief anyone chooses to subscribe to and why I shouldn't say when I believe that belief is wrong ?
Religion is stupid, a hopeless belief in one of a panetheon of mutally contradictory super beings held together with fictious fairy stories and arcane rituals. I can't think how else you'd describe this if not as stupid.
Whether or not you believe people who fully subscribe to these practices are stupid or not is something you will have to decide for yourself but personally I know which side of the fence I'm on and I don't need any talking bushes to help make my mind up.
I'm sure there are non Christians who share these same concerns about the wii ( the Taleban spring to mind for one ) but you can usally bet that campaigns such as these have far more religious backing than non religious backing.
National security concerns are not a part of the market, and never should be.
If there was a need for corporations to pass on information which may be useful to national organisations then the market would provide one, clearly it's not profitable to do so because as Government entities the national security agencies are far too inefficient and bueraucratic and unable to adjust properly to the marketplace, indeed the government may even have interfered to the extent whereby the government bodies aren't even allowed to pay corporations for useful intelligence !
Perhaps but surely the market would have seen this possibility years and years ago and it if would have worked the market would have employed its market forces and exploited this niche 100% efficiently, as only the market can and produced many fabulous and wonderous things.
So sorry but, the market says no.
The phrase "metaphorically speaking" in that context is simply meaningless, where is the metaphor ? Possibly the submitter meant to say "pretend the two articles I linked to weren't written by same person and that when I said at the beginning of the article that it's interesting when different people have different opinions but it's even more interesting when the same person has two contradictory opinions"
/.
I like a good discussion as much as the next person but if the submitter wanted to discuss the benefits and pitfalls of PThreads vs Windows threads surely he could have just said that and posted to some interesting articles on the subject which would have more authority than two articles written by the same person which look suspiciously similar with just the words Windows and PThreads swapped around.
I think that posting things simply for purposes of creating a heated discussion is called flamebaiting which given the normal robust discussions which gone on in the threads here is really uncessary on the front page of
Is this some kind of weird joke ?
First of all on it's own terms the story makes no sense, the anonymous coward starts off by saying it's interesting when people disagree. He then links to two articles which, as he points out, are written by the same person and then asks who is right. He has just pointed out the opinions are both from the same person and he wants to know who is right, this is just moronic.
Secondly although I know nothing about PThreads or Win threads I can see that both those articles are largely the same with just the terms PThreads and Win threads switched so in one article he is claiming an advantage for one based on what he has stated as the advantages of the other in his other article.
Why is this on the front page, why was the submission accepted in the first place when it's complete nonsense and the most recent post by the author of both articles was in 2006.
The best solution is clearly to teach your kids how to drive responsibly as soon as they're physically capable of operating the necessary machinery.
I believe it was the US who also promised Pakistan that unless Pakistan was very helpful towards the US and its war on terror and war in Afghanistan that Pakistan would be "bombed back to the stone-age". Perhaps you could attempt to explain what that might have meant and how it's different from what Iran have said ?
Well certainly his ( and Hancocks and others ) detractors are keen to point out that much of what is in the books is complete nonsense and his theories are simply lengthy pillars of supposition based upon foundations of hypothesis sunk into the rock of make believe but that doesn't alter the fact that he definitely must be on to something. The inquiring mind knows to read between the lines !
If there is one thing that Von Daniken has taught me it's that belief has nothing to do with science so no, I don't belive that they are landing pads for alien spaceships. Rather, through following the lengthy scientific daisy chain of Danikens faultless research and evidence I can say that with some ( minimal but necessary ) speculation to join some of the strands together Von Daniken forges an almost unbreakable chain of logic to show how the pyramids are in all likelyhood simply the exposed tips of the remains of a vast and fully operational spaceport which may still be use to this day !!
Now we have proof that there is at least one spaceport fully operating in the Egyptian desert it's surely not beyond belief that there may be others scattered all across the globe ! Indeed anyone with this advanced level of space technology ( built from pure stone no less, something which is way beyond our current level of technology - we can't even build stone aeroplanes yet ! ) it would be more unbelievable to think that there wasn't a vast global network of spaceports, many probably buried deep in the uncharted depths of the ocean are almost certainly still fully operational.
Obviously we aren't yet technologically advanced enough ourselves to read the few signs and clues left by these amazing technological societies which we have just proved must have existed millenia ago to build and operate these spaceports so it's likely that there great stone spaceships remain undetectable to us today as the few surviving members from whatever great catastrophe caught up with their societies continue to battle who nows what forces of evil which may even now be gathering at the edge of the galaxy with our annihalation on their minds !
I won't bother to lay out all the evidence for these simple claims but you may take it from me that I have studied this in some depth and proved in my own mind beyond doubt that it is all 100% verifiable and true. The forces of evil work against me and my work is buried by nameless cabals of scientists and archaelogists so it would be too dangerous to publish the full, mind blowing, facts I have uncovered but I will be releasing a book ( £25 in most good book shops ) and a TV series which will scrape the surface of some of my claims.
Have you read Von Daniken ? I definitely recommend "The Chariots Of The Gods" since he also pretty much single handedly destroys the modern archaelogical conspiracy of silence surrounding the facts about how the Gods used their advanced space-faring technology to live amongst us across the globe until a series of unfortunate yet totally ( locally ) cataclsymic events removed most traces of their presence except for the few totally conclusive tell tale hints left strewn from Machu Pichu to the Egypt for dedicated super-archaelogists like Erik to uncover.
Also Lyall Watson fights the good fight on a number of fronts against an array entrenched and protectionist theories espoused by not only archaeologists but also geologists, physicists and scienctific dogma in general.
Hancock, is the new guy on the block but he is able to link all the good work undertaken by the likes of Von Daniken and Watson and prove that these space-faring super civilizations came from Orion and he can also prove not just the exact date but the exact second, minute, hour and day that they were all wiped out by the various utterly catastrophic yet strangely localised disasters which managed to wipe them out utterly so quickly they didn't even have time to jump back in their spaceships.
Obviously they did have enough time to build a series of enigmatic and utterly conclusive monuments throughout the world to speak to future super-archaelogists such as Mr Hancock, Bauval, Daniken and Watson and tell of the terrible catastrophe they could see coming and how it would wipe them out utterly and how this caused them to gather every member of their super civilisation, complete with houses, buildings and strange alien flying machines directly over the catastrophe, disable their spaceships and entrust the vast learning and knowledge of their super-society to a few, scattered enigmatic encoded monuments.
I can't wait for the next valiant defender of the true science to take up the torch and carry on where Hancock left off.
As a purist from across the pond your plasticy standing about game might produce a load of hugely muscled ogres but for strength, stamina, endurance and speed you'd be better off with rugby players. I just read that your teams are actually 2 seperate teams because your players just can't hack playing the full match ! Incredible, especially since they stop for breaks every 5 seconds and those girlish gossipy chats they always seem to be having.
Advertisement filler ?
Whatever you call it, it's not football. Big nancy girls footballers may be but at least they don't need to encase themselves in body armour and helmets to prevent their hair getting messed up.
Rugby is far more exciting than either football or that daft american off-shoot ( not to mention american rounders and american netball or whatever you call them ).