RC2 is much more stable than RC1; I haven't seen any problems with RC2 at all, unlike with RC1.
Quite frankly, most software home user X is going to use will not have any problem whatsoever with SP2; it's only the same dodgy software that writes to its own directory instead of %appdata% or HKEY_CURRENT_USER (not restricted yet, unfortunately, but I'm hoping they'll do that for Longhorn), and/or uses all sorts of godawful hardware tricks that shouldn't have worked in the first place, and/or uses ActiveX on Internet Explorer as an execution mechanism (thanks to the new security controls in the Local Computer zone), that'll have problems with it.
In other words, most well-written Windows software won't have a problem, even with NX enabled (and it can be disabled.) The new Windows Firewall, unlike the old one, actually works. And the IE stuff can be got around on an issue-by-issue basis on the user's, not Gator's, command. SP2 is a gigantic improvement in all respects; and, since it's very much needed, we should be hoping people will take it up, no matter whether you're a Linux or Windows devotee - rooted boxes are a problem for the whole 'Net, not just for the guy behind the keyboard. It's not perfect by any means, but at least they're trying.
Bet you they're going to corrupt the audio CD layer as per usual (or, as SunnComm do, use a messed-up Windows service to do the same thing), but allow you to burn the 96Kbit/s (at best) WMA files you generally get in the CD-Extra session. Wow, what generosity.
If that's the same Keycom as the one that provides awful phone/56K-net service to universities throughout the UK (that haven't dumped them), they're practically conmen and so probably won't do a thing.
No surprise that Slashtrolls are bored uni students, though...
The European site seems to have bare firmware for most drives (excepting one DVD recorder as far as I can see). It even links to an updater program for the Amiga.
The DPI feature is a new-to-XP feature, and with modern laptop screens accelerating in resolution (mine is a 15" screen at 1600x1200, ISTR some are now doing 1920x1480+) the DPI feature is an absolute lifesaver, even for someone who isn't legally blind. DPI, along with ClearType, are the only reasons I use XP instead of Windows 2000 on my laptop.
Most programs work fine with it (including, gratifyingly, Firefox/Thunderbird). A couple of badly written pieces of software - mostly old freeware VB programs - choke, a couple of graphics are misaligned here or there (but nothing in the base system) and it generally works OK. Combine it with ClearType, and XP works very well on a laptop screen; certainly much better than any other version of Windows.
Not really, and a newbie definitely won't. The old installer didn't even give you an example of what you needed to enter, didn't give you an error when you entered "uk" (remember, it's a valid entry too) or explained what the value you entered was, so you didn't notice until sometime after. That's horrendous design, and it's very good that they've fixed it.
My experience with the old Debian installer was poor, and there are several important reasons for it -
1. No newbie will *ever* be able to use dselect. The 'help' is confusing, buttons you expect would do something in fact call up something completely different, and it's a generally horrible piece of software. Worse, there have been better alternatives (aptitude) for *ages*, but Debian haven't integrated them.
(What I think would have been best for the installer: a FreeBSD-style simplified checkbox-only package selector. FreeBSD's text install works. Failing that, tasksel isn't that bad, although they should add more cause for customisation.)
2. Debian's old keyboard selector was braindead, which I'm pleased to see they fixed in the new version. The program expected you to enter in the two-letter country code relating to your location, with no list of what country was what. Unfortunately, in Debian 'UK' relates to the Ukraine and 'GB' to the United Kingdom. Not that it told you.
3. Debian should really take a lead off of Mandrake 10's installer. Not because it's graphical, but because it is amazingly easy. Mandrake's installer for the bootloader, for example, has a choice of three options, all in easy-for-newbies language. That's easy to do in a text interface.
On this installer: it does look better than the old one, but then RedHat 5.2's was better than the old one. Of course, I haven't actually used the installer - I don't like letting beta products near important files - but it does look like an improvement (most of the empty fields seem to have gone, keyboard selector fixed et al). Just a few small problems seem to remain, and I hope they fix them; Debian's takeup, I feel, has been adversely affected by its installer.
Yeah: by tri-band, the phone manufacturers mean 900/1800/1900 (the former two are used in Europe and the rest of the world; in the UK, O2 and Vodafone use 900, while T-Mobile and Orange use 1800).
It looks like the US, never willing to do anything the same way as any other country does it (like, in fact, 1900MHz GSM), is now introducing yet another GSM band at 850MHz in order to make the mobile phone manufacturers' lives harder. It's their loss.
That's not extreme (EE); a single 'E' indicates that it's a Prescott. You know, the one that is 10C+ hotter and is actually slower than Northwood at the same GHz rating?
Now, just imagine how bad it's going to be in a laptop...
I saw a Dell machine that did auto-crossing once, but it was a Optiplex with onboard 1000Base-TX (back when it was still way too expensive for ordinary mortals; now, it's just expensive), so the small cost was probably part of that. I haven't seen anything like that since then, unfortunately.
I do know that HP and one or two others are shipping Itanium2 servers full-steam at the moment, despite Intel's recent 64-bit malaise. It's almost a given that all of those will be running 64-bit Windows. I've seen a demo of a HP 64-bit workstation running 64-bit Windows, and it was really nice. It even had accelerated video drivers, but I don't know what video hardware.
Almost certainly either NVIDIA or ATI; probably NVIDIA, since only a couple of ATI cards are supported on Itanium. NVIDIA also already have an accelerated AMD64-Windows driver, and accelerated Itanium and AMD64 Linux drivers available from their web site. They are much further ahead on 64-bit than ATI are, and that could be to their great advantage.
What people forget about HL2 is that no-one even knew the game existed until E3 last year. There had been rumours, sure, but nothing specific, no pictures or anything. Valve kept it secret and it worked, at least until that idiot broke in. Therefore, even if HL2 misses 2004, it still won't be in the same vapourware category as was NWN or Daikatana or especially Duke Nukem (will take) Forever, and won't be until about 2006. And it probably will hit this year.
The Slashdot criticism of HL2 in every vapourware article, therefore, is pretty much overegged and wrong. DNF, however... I've been waiting for that game since 1999. It's not gonna happen, I'm afraid.
The default kernel is shipped with ancilliary features as modules, in order to save space and avoid conflicts. This includes sound. Go to/modules, type ls snd*, look at the modules that are there. Text mode screensavers are in there too; they're all of the type *_saver.ko. As long as you know what type of sound card you have, it should be supported either by default or via a patch. The FreeBSD modules commands are kldload, kldunload, kldstat; look at the man pages (in FreeBSD, the system man pages are actually useful, as is the module system). You can also configure modules to load on startup; edit the file/boot/modules.conf. I'm still using 4.x (about to set up 5.2 on my laptop), and you probably should be too; 5 is still very much developer's release territory, and will be until 5-STABLE is created.
Also, read the Handbook. Everything FreeBSD you ever wanted is in there. The appropriate section for sound is 16.2. It's a wonderful operating system - much more sensible and well-organised than any Linux distribution I've used, although admittedly not as newbie-impressing as something like Mandrake 9.2 - and its documentation is very high quality, so I suggest you do look at it.
Google did try to help by listing the URLs of all the banned sites in the linked DMCA complaint... that not enough for you, eh? In any case, xenu.net is back up at number 2 for "Scientology".
Remember, if you do this in the States, people can sue you using the 1990 TCPA, in the civil courts. At least $500 per violation; $1500 in special circumstances, i.e. you know that you're breaking the law. Still sound good to you?
Plus, fax spammers don't really have much cost to them - the main cost is to me. Toner costs, paper costs, time taken that I can't receive any faxes I actually want to have. People who do fax spamming deserve every single brickbat they get.
It is freeform; there is a custom setting function which allows you to set your own DPI number. It's actually a different thing to "Normal/Large Fonts", which are still available from the appearance tab.
XP only (and it's one of only two good new features in XP, along with ClearType) -
Right click on desktop.
Select "properties".
Click on the "Settings" tab.
Click "Advanced".
Select your dot per inch rating. I like 120dpi on my 1600x1200 screen.
Click OK.
Reboot.
Also, whilst you're in Display Properties, select "Apperance", then from the settings screen turn ClearType font smoothing on. It really does make a big improvement.
You may have been forgetting something to do with that Athlon 2100+ - its bus speed, which in the case of the 2100+ is 133MHz. At least one Athlon board I've seen defaults to 100MHz bus speed (does *not* autodetect bus speed), and those are the speeds you've been seeing. Also, many older Athlon boards have 100/133+ speeds set using a jumper, which was usually shipped as default to 100 (this has mostly gone to software now, thankfully); further bus speed configurations could be done using the BIOS.
You have to do this with Intel too whenever they bump the bus speed, unless they've changed the electrical connections on the socket or whatever as they usually do. Also, whenever you see random crashes, the first thing you think, always, is memory error; then you update board's BIOS, video, chipset drivers etc. I saw this recently on a board with a dodgy stick of RAM; causing very random crashes, despite the fact the dodgy RAM was >1GB.
You're not making adequate comparisons, anyway (despite what you said). I mean, Biostar compared to an Intel OEM board? Come on. I buy MSI for AMD builds, and I've never seen a bad one. ASUS, ABIT, Gigabyte etc. AMD boards are generally fine too, and the low end MSI KT600 is actually surprisingly good (if, as said before, you have to manually enter the bus speed, at least in software.)
In any case, Athlon 64 is a completetly different chip to AXP, so nothing from the past applies. It has a P4-style heat spreader. It's cheaper in the UK than the highest-end non-"extreme" P4 by about UKP100, it's about as fast, and according to the reviews I've read it actually produces less heat than its competitor, as have Athlon XPs since about the Thoroughbred (I've seen hot P4s c, 60C and cool Athlons c. 40C, both using the stock retail fan/compound. They're both quiet, too.) The cooling problem with AMD? No longer there, as long as you use an acceptable fan - and the retail one does come into that category.
Besides, my overclocking-freak acquaintance swears by them; if the OCers like it, it's *got* to be fine for the normal person. Wouldn't it?
Note: I do own Intel machines; my laptop is a P4-m, because at the time AMD laptops pretty much came with godawful integrated graphics. I think the situation is mostly the same today, unfortunately. My desktop is a fairly old Thunderbird Athlon 1GHz, and it works and always has worked fine. I have seen dodgy AMD machines from friends, but the main problem one was based on an ultradodgy PC Chips off-brand board that was unfortunately not the same as the Elite K7S5A, which can at least be made acceptable. It had the bus speed problem, too.
I'm not too sure that it actually is *the* evil SCO, but there is a company by that name taking up space in an office building opposite Haymarket Station in Edinburgh, and it only says "SCO" on the building directory. Interestingly, Novell's Scottish office is five minutes' walk away, and IBM's isn't that far away.
Interestingly, I cannot find "SCO" anywhere in my Edinburgh phone book or the online directory enquiries service, or a Scottish location anywhere on the SCO website. I know there's something there, but it might well not be the evil one. On the other hand, there is a possibility it could be. Strange, isn't it?
Hong Kong is NTSC. It is also very cheap, even for legitimate discs (as this site sells). After all, if it's legal there, it's usually legal for you to import it, although not to sell. You might need an all-region player (HK being in region 3), but a lot of legit HK discs - like Shaolin Soccer - are code 0 anyway.
Over in the UK, all of our our DVD players can play both PAL and NTSC, almost all of the cheap supermarket ones are already or can be made multiregion by remote, and certain high-street hi-fi chains sell modded MR product (I have a MR Pioneer 360 from them). Even our version of Amazon sells modded multiregion kit - the current top spot is a modded Sony DVP-NS330. Multiregion is much more widespread here, and that's a good thing for British consumers (even though most of them don't know about it). I try to let my friends know.
Sorry - this is a pet bug of mine. Don't want to sound like a Microsoft ass-kisser (I use the best tool for the job, nothing more), but I am rather too familiar with MS Office.
MS Word - which I assume you're referring to - has not changed its file format since Word 97, and that includes 2003. That is four major releases in seven years. Office XML is optional right now. Also, if you still use WfW95, you can get a plugin from Microsoft to allow you to r/w Word97 (and thus Word2K and onward) files, or use the free Word Viewer (which is available for Windows 3.1). There are similar Excel and PPT viewers available.
(Admittedly, this excludes Access - but then again, since when does anyone release MDB files on their web site? Anyone that isn't really, really stupid, anyway.)
In fact, this is very much one of the unknown PC Annoyances as seen in this book: you don't need to pay for Office in order to read Word documents The Way They Were Meant To Be Read. Word Viewer and OOo make for a fairly good free office; it's a much better situation than it used to be.
/*
* RealTek 8129/8139 PCI NIC driver
*
* Supports several extremely cheap PCI 10/100 adapters based on
* the RealTek chipset.
[...]
* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
* exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC.
Let's just say he doesn't like it much. The Realtek cheapies are basically the NIC equivalents of Winmodems, except that Realtek at least provide their specs.
(My NAT router, an old Pentium-120 running FreeBSD 4.9, is coping just fine with two SIS-type cards - Netgear FA831s - in there. They were about eight pounds each (UK). Good buy, I think; copes with a saturated connection, eg BitTorrent, with almost total ease.)
Indeed: the worst recent British railway accident was Clapham Junction in 1989, some years before privatisation.
Incredibly, some of the recommendations from Clapham Junction have still not been implemented because the railway companies have been stuffed by Railtrack; the removal of all slamdoor trains from the network, for example, or Automatic Train Protection.
GNER are, however, the best railway company I've travelled with; for a start, the price of beverages on their trains actually went down after privatisation, which is somewhat unusual (ScotRail contracted theirs out to make a fast buck, so it costs 1.40 for a cup of machine coffee.) Very good company.
They got an advantage during privatisation because they got the newest-electrified track and newest trains; they've used them well (unlike some of the London commuter services.) Virgin Trains are so hated by the general public because they got lumped with the least well-maintained railway line and the first-generation electric trains; no matter how good the company is, you'd hate them if they had such poor facilities.
This, by the way, is why they're so annoyed with Network Rail's continued downgrading of the modernisation work on the west coast main line (done to allow them to put new trains on the network). They certainly deserve to be.
Slashdot Mirror
RC2 is much more stable than RC1; I haven't seen any problems with RC2 at all, unlike with RC1.
Quite frankly, most software home user X is going to use will not have any problem whatsoever with SP2; it's only the same dodgy software that writes to its own directory instead of %appdata% or HKEY_CURRENT_USER (not restricted yet, unfortunately, but I'm hoping they'll do that for Longhorn), and/or uses all sorts of godawful hardware tricks that shouldn't have worked in the first place, and/or uses ActiveX on Internet Explorer as an execution mechanism (thanks to the new security controls in the Local Computer zone), that'll have problems with it.
In other words, most well-written Windows software won't have a problem, even with NX enabled (and it can be disabled.) The new Windows Firewall, unlike the old one, actually works. And the IE stuff can be got around on an issue-by-issue basis on the user's, not Gator's, command. SP2 is a gigantic improvement in all respects; and, since it's very much needed, we should be hoping people will take it up, no matter whether you're a Linux or Windows devotee - rooted boxes are a problem for the whole 'Net, not just for the guy behind the keyboard. It's not perfect by any means, but at least they're trying.
It's going to be even worse than that.
Bet you they're going to corrupt the audio CD layer as per usual (or, as SunnComm do, use a messed-up Windows service to do the same thing), but allow you to burn the 96Kbit/s (at best) WMA files you generally get in the CD-Extra session. Wow, what generosity.
If that's the same Keycom as the one that provides awful phone/56K-net service to universities throughout the UK (that haven't dumped them), they're practically conmen and so probably won't do a thing.
No surprise that Slashtrolls are bored uni students, though...
The European site seems to have bare firmware for most drives (excepting one DVD recorder as far as I can see). It even links to an updater program for the Amiga.
The DPI feature is a new-to-XP feature, and with modern laptop screens accelerating in resolution (mine is a 15" screen at 1600x1200, ISTR some are now doing 1920x1480+) the DPI feature is an absolute lifesaver, even for someone who isn't legally blind. DPI, along with ClearType, are the only reasons I use XP instead of Windows 2000 on my laptop.
Most programs work fine with it (including, gratifyingly, Firefox/Thunderbird). A couple of badly written pieces of software - mostly old freeware VB programs - choke, a couple of graphics are misaligned here or there (but nothing in the base system) and it generally works OK. Combine it with ClearType, and XP works very well on a laptop screen; certainly much better than any other version of Windows.
Not really, and a newbie definitely won't. The old installer didn't even give you an example of what you needed to enter, didn't give you an error when you entered "uk" (remember, it's a valid entry too) or explained what the value you entered was, so you didn't notice until sometime after. That's horrendous design, and it's very good that they've fixed it.
.uk, not .gb.
And remember, our domain names are
My experience with the old Debian installer was poor, and there are several important reasons for it -
1. No newbie will *ever* be able to use dselect. The 'help' is confusing, buttons you expect would do something in fact call up something completely different, and it's a generally horrible piece of software. Worse, there have been better alternatives (aptitude) for *ages*, but Debian haven't integrated them.
(What I think would have been best for the installer: a FreeBSD-style simplified checkbox-only package selector. FreeBSD's text install works. Failing that, tasksel isn't that bad, although they should add more cause for customisation.)
2. Debian's old keyboard selector was braindead, which I'm pleased to see they fixed in the new version. The program expected you to enter in the two-letter country code relating to your location, with no list of what country was what. Unfortunately, in Debian 'UK' relates to the Ukraine and 'GB' to the United Kingdom. Not that it told you.
3. Debian should really take a lead off of Mandrake 10's installer. Not because it's graphical, but because it is amazingly easy. Mandrake's installer for the bootloader, for example, has a choice of three options, all in easy-for-newbies language. That's easy to do in a text interface.
On this installer: it does look better than the old one, but then RedHat 5.2's was better than the old one. Of course, I haven't actually used the installer - I don't like letting beta products near important files - but it does look like an improvement (most of the empty fields seem to have gone, keyboard selector fixed et al). Just a few small problems seem to remain, and I hope they fix them; Debian's takeup, I feel, has been adversely affected by its installer.
Don't forget Warp Records either; excellent label, excellent music, supplies VBR MP3s. And it definitely works in Europe.
Yeah: by tri-band, the phone manufacturers mean 900/1800/1900 (the former two are used in Europe and the rest of the world; in the UK, O2 and Vodafone use 900, while T-Mobile and Orange use 1800).
It looks like the US, never willing to do anything the same way as any other country does it (like, in fact, 1900MHz GSM), is now introducing yet another GSM band at 850MHz in order to make the mobile phone manufacturers' lives harder. It's their loss.
That's not extreme (EE); a single 'E' indicates that it's a Prescott. You know, the one that is 10C+ hotter and is actually slower than Northwood at the same GHz rating?
Now, just imagine how bad it's going to be in a laptop...
I saw a Dell machine that did auto-crossing once, but it was a Optiplex with onboard 1000Base-TX (back when it was still way too expensive for ordinary mortals; now, it's just expensive), so the small cost was probably part of that. I haven't seen anything like that since then, unfortunately.
What people forget about HL2 is that no-one even knew the game existed until E3 last year. There had been rumours, sure, but nothing specific, no pictures or anything. Valve kept it secret and it worked, at least until that idiot broke in. Therefore, even if HL2 misses 2004, it still won't be in the same vapourware category as was NWN or Daikatana or especially Duke Nukem (will take) Forever, and won't be until about 2006. And it probably will hit this year.
The Slashdot criticism of HL2 in every vapourware article, therefore, is pretty much overegged and wrong. DNF, however... I've been waiting for that game since 1999. It's not gonna happen, I'm afraid.
He is meaning the modern artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992).
The default kernel is shipped with ancilliary features as modules, in order to save space and avoid conflicts. This includes sound. Go to /modules, type ls snd*, look at the modules that are there. Text mode screensavers are in there too; they're all of the type *_saver.ko. As long as you know what type of sound card you have, it should be supported either by default or via a patch. The FreeBSD modules commands are kldload, kldunload, kldstat; look at the man pages (in FreeBSD, the system man pages are actually useful, as is the module system). You can also configure modules to load on startup; edit the file /boot/modules.conf. I'm still using 4.x (about to set up 5.2 on my laptop), and you probably should be too; 5 is still very much developer's release territory, and will be until 5-STABLE is created.
Also, read the Handbook. Everything FreeBSD you ever wanted is in there. The appropriate section for sound is 16.2. It's a wonderful operating system - much more sensible and well-organised than any Linux distribution I've used, although admittedly not as newbie-impressing as something like Mandrake 9.2 - and its documentation is very high quality, so I suggest you do look at it.
Google did try to help by listing the URLs of all the banned sites in the linked DMCA complaint... that not enough for you, eh? In any case, xenu.net is back up at number 2 for "Scientology".
Remember, if you do this in the States, people can sue you using the 1990 TCPA, in the civil courts. At least $500 per violation; $1500 in special circumstances, i.e. you know that you're breaking the law. Still sound good to you?
Plus, fax spammers don't really have much cost to them - the main cost is to me. Toner costs, paper costs, time taken that I can't receive any faxes I actually want to have. People who do fax spamming deserve every single brickbat they get.
It is freeform; there is a custom setting function which allows you to set your own DPI number. It's actually a different thing to "Normal/Large Fonts", which are still available from the appearance tab.
- Right click on desktop.
- Select "properties".
- Click on the "Settings" tab.
- Click "Advanced".
- Select your dot per inch rating. I like 120dpi on my 1600x1200 screen.
- Click OK.
- Reboot.
Also, whilst you're in Display Properties, select "Apperance", then from the settings screen turn ClearType font smoothing on. It really does make a big improvement.You may have been forgetting something to do with that Athlon 2100+ - its bus speed, which in the case of the 2100+ is 133MHz. At least one Athlon board I've seen defaults to 100MHz bus speed (does *not* autodetect bus speed), and those are the speeds you've been seeing. Also, many older Athlon boards have 100/133+ speeds set using a jumper, which was usually shipped as default to 100 (this has mostly gone to software now, thankfully); further bus speed configurations could be done using the BIOS.
You have to do this with Intel too whenever they bump the bus speed, unless they've changed the electrical connections on the socket or whatever as they usually do. Also, whenever you see random crashes, the first thing you think, always, is memory error; then you update board's BIOS, video, chipset drivers etc. I saw this recently on a board with a dodgy stick of RAM; causing very random crashes, despite the fact the dodgy RAM was >1GB.
You're not making adequate comparisons, anyway (despite what you said). I mean, Biostar compared to an Intel OEM board? Come on. I buy MSI for AMD builds, and I've never seen a bad one. ASUS, ABIT, Gigabyte etc. AMD boards are generally fine too, and the low end MSI KT600 is actually surprisingly good (if, as said before, you have to manually enter the bus speed, at least in software.)
In any case, Athlon 64 is a completetly different chip to AXP, so nothing from the past applies. It has a P4-style heat spreader. It's cheaper in the UK than the highest-end non-"extreme" P4 by about UKP100, it's about as fast, and according to the reviews I've read it actually produces less heat than its competitor, as have Athlon XPs since about the Thoroughbred (I've seen hot P4s c, 60C and cool Athlons c. 40C, both using the stock retail fan/compound. They're both quiet, too.) The cooling problem with AMD? No longer there, as long as you use an acceptable fan - and the retail one does come into that category.
Besides, my overclocking-freak acquaintance swears by them; if the OCers like it, it's *got* to be fine for the normal person. Wouldn't it?
Note: I do own Intel machines; my laptop is a P4-m, because at the time AMD laptops pretty much came with godawful integrated graphics. I think the situation is mostly the same today, unfortunately. My desktop is a fairly old Thunderbird Athlon 1GHz, and it works and always has worked fine. I have seen dodgy AMD machines from friends, but the main problem one was based on an ultradodgy PC Chips off-brand board that was unfortunately not the same as the Elite K7S5A, which can at least be made acceptable. It had the bus speed problem, too.
I'm not too sure that it actually is *the* evil SCO, but there is a company by that name taking up space in an office building opposite Haymarket Station in Edinburgh, and it only says "SCO" on the building directory. Interestingly, Novell's Scottish office is five minutes' walk away, and IBM's isn't that far away.
Interestingly, I cannot find "SCO" anywhere in my Edinburgh phone book or the online directory enquiries service, or a Scottish location anywhere on the SCO website. I know there's something there, but it might well not be the evil one. On the other hand, there is a possibility it could be. Strange, isn't it?
Hong Kong is NTSC. It is also very cheap, even for legitimate discs (as this site sells). After all, if it's legal there, it's usually legal for you to import it, although not to sell. You might need an all-region player (HK being in region 3), but a lot of legit HK discs - like Shaolin Soccer - are code 0 anyway.
Over in the UK, all of our our DVD players can play both PAL and NTSC, almost all of the cheap supermarket ones are already or can be made multiregion by remote, and certain high-street hi-fi chains sell modded MR product (I have a MR Pioneer 360 from them). Even our version of Amazon sells modded multiregion kit - the current top spot is a modded Sony DVP-NS330. Multiregion is much more widespread here, and that's a good thing for British consumers (even though most of them don't know about it). I try to let my friends know.
Sorry - this is a pet bug of mine. Don't want to sound like a Microsoft ass-kisser (I use the best tool for the job, nothing more), but I am rather too familiar with MS Office.
MS Word - which I assume you're referring to - has not changed its file format since Word 97, and that includes 2003. That is four major releases in seven years. Office XML is optional right now. Also, if you still use WfW95, you can get a plugin from Microsoft to allow you to r/w Word97 (and thus Word2K and onward) files, or use the free Word Viewer (which is available for Windows 3.1). There are similar Excel and PPT viewers available.
(Admittedly, this excludes Access - but then again, since when does anyone release MDB files on their web site? Anyone that isn't really, really stupid, anyway.)
In fact, this is very much one of the unknown PC Annoyances as seen in this book: you don't need to pay for Office in order to read Word documents The Way They Were Meant To Be Read. Word Viewer and OOo make for a fairly good free office; it's a much better situation than it used to be.
(My NAT router, an old Pentium-120 running FreeBSD 4.9, is coping just fine with two SIS-type cards - Netgear FA831s - in there. They were about eight pounds each (UK). Good buy, I think; copes with a saturated connection, eg BitTorrent, with almost total ease.)
Indeed: the worst recent British railway accident was Clapham Junction in 1989, some years before privatisation.
Incredibly, some of the recommendations from Clapham Junction have still not been implemented because the railway companies have been stuffed by Railtrack; the removal of all slamdoor trains from the network, for example, or Automatic Train Protection.
GNER are, however, the best railway company I've travelled with; for a start, the price of beverages on their trains actually went down after privatisation, which is somewhat unusual (ScotRail contracted theirs out to make a fast buck, so it costs 1.40 for a cup of machine coffee.) Very good company.
They got an advantage during privatisation because they got the newest-electrified track and newest trains; they've used them well (unlike some of the London commuter services.) Virgin Trains are so hated by the general public because they got lumped with the least well-maintained railway line and the first-generation electric trains; no matter how good the company is, you'd hate them if they had such poor facilities.
This, by the way, is why they're so annoyed with Network Rail's continued downgrading of the modernisation work on the west coast main line (done to allow them to put new trains on the network). They certainly deserve to be.