Any Techies Out There ?

Apologies for the lack of posts - 12 hour days still taking their toll, and last weekend I did a rare thing for a man of advanced years, lobbed a sleeping bag in the boot and took off for a party in the wilds of Wales, hosted by an old friend from way, way back.

It's all still going to hell in a handcart quite nicely without my running commentary, so what I really want to ask is - any of you built a fanless PC ? In my old age I'm beginning to resent the noise, especially as most of the PCs around the house are basically Web clients, music players and word processors - only a couple do serious work.

Ideally I'd like a fanless motherboard and PSU that can still cope with decent graphics, maybe a TV card, and a couple of full-size hard disks. What I see out there are devices designed to be crammed into as small a footprint as possible, whereas I'm happy for the box to be a decent size - indeed, it should allow for a more powerful processor and motherboard if you have big fat passive coolers and a passively cooled power supply.

Does such a thing exist ?

Silverlight Woes

Anyone else had trouble with the wizzy new Microsoft web add-on ? A largeish number of people are using it to present media content, and you need to download a client/environment/whatever.

Sky subscribers can watch Sky Sports online when away from home, and my son installed Silverlight on a Win2K box running Firefox 3.6 last time he came back in order to view the footy. Wrecked it. Every other website accessed via Firefox caused Firefox to close, and Silverlight uninstall failed, as did my attempted manual delete/registry hacks. Susan got very ratty 'cos it was 'her' box, ended up having to reinstall the whole C drive.

Is it just my ancient Windows release, or is Silverlight the spawn of the devil ?

A Military Question

I've been re-reading Arthur Bryant's 'Turn of the Tide', the memoirs of the Brit WW2 C.I.G.S. Alan Brooke, in which Alanbrooke laments the slaughters of the first world war. The young subalterns who died in those days would have been the senior officers of 1940, and Brooke had a low opinion of many of those filling their places.

"...in my capacity as Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, and later as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, one of my major difficulties arose from the paucity of real high-class leaders. The First World War had unfortunately taken the cream of our manhood. Those that had fallen were the born leaders of men, in command of companies or battalions. It was always the best that fell by taking the lead. Those that we had lost as subalterns, captains and majors in the First World War were the very ones we were short of as colonels, brigadiers, and generals in the Second World War."

Alanbrooke, Notes On My Life, Ch 3.

He thought the best and the bravest had gone, leaving the second-raters, a view which seems to have been widely shared between and after the wars (in James Barlow's 1960 novel the Patriots, the hero, an Arnhem paratrooper, beats up a man for airing them, seeing it as a slight on his dead comrades).

Yet the Germans lost a lot of people in WW1, but still were the best fighting army in WW2, with excellent generals too. A good job Hitler kept over-ruling them.

Did they lose fewer young officers in WW1 than we did ? Did their juniors not 'lead from the front' ? Or was the WW2 performance down to the generally-admitted high standards of competence and (especially) initiative of German NCOs ? In other words, why did the WW1 slaughter seem to harm us more than them ? Or were the same theories about the consequences of the lost leaders aired in Germany too ?

Help Wanted ...

By Sam Tarran :

I've just been assigned a report on the economic performance of Germany based upon the indicators of unemployment, inflation, balance of payments, and GDP over the last thirty years, to be submitted in three weeks.

Any advice? Pointers? Little snippets of information?

Any ideas out there ? I've no idea if you can get OECD stuff going back 30 years.






UPDATE - and while we're talking economics, pro-immigration and anti-British zealot (but learned economist) Willem Buiter agrees with Laban that the high street banks should all be nationalised. Alas he's forgotten the bit about putting their directors on trial and confiscating their assets, before repeating the process with the accountancy firms who signed off the accounts since, say, 2002. He's nearly as pessimistic as Ambrose Evans Pritchard :

In the name of preventing a collapse of the UK banking system, we are witnessing the socialisation - at first gradual, but now quite rapid - of all balance sheet risk of the UK banks by the UK government. This is risky and, in my view, unwise. The manner in which it is done also seems designed to maximise moral hazard ...

But even if the UK is not the next European country to face a sovereign debt challenge, there is a non-negligible risk that before too long, the growing exposure of the British sovereign to the banking system (and especially to the foreign currency funding risk faced by the UK banking system), together with the 9 and 10 per cent of GDP general government fiscal deficits expected for the next couple of years, may prompt a loss of confidence by the global financial community in the British banks, currency and sovereign.

We may well witness the UK authorities going cap-in-hand to the IMF, the EU, the ECB and the fiscally super-solvent EU member states (if there are any left), prompted by a triple crisis (banking, sterling and sovereign debt), to request a bail out. I hope and trust that the UK authorities are in regular contact with the IMF, the US administration, Brussels, Frankfurt and the leading EU member countries to prepare for a possible internationally coordinated bail-out operation for the British banking system and sovereign.

He seems to think the Great British Pound may go the way of the Great Icelandic Krone. The Krone halved against most foreign currencies, I believe - whereas sterling's only halved against the Yen and lost a third against most other currencies.

Not actually that far to go then. Let us see what the dawn will bring !

Should You Be Buying From Amazon ?

In the last 18 months I've probably bought more from Amazon than from any other online retailer, as it's overtaken my previous top site of ebuyer (the house now has 5 PCs built from Ebuyer components plus two 'bought-in' boxes, so my purchases there have diminished). Admittedly a single Ebuyer order might have been for £150-odd compared with my average £30-40 on Amazon, but the family between them have probably spent getting on for £500 this year, including Amazon gift vouchers.


Following the revelations in the Sunday Times about the way Amazon UK treats its staff, I'm wondering if I shouldn't diversify - maybe look to Borders for the books and CDs and elsewhere for the electronics. They're getting too dominant in the marketplace anyway.

An investigation by The Sunday Times at Amazon’s enormous warehouse in Bedfordshire has found that workers were:

– Warned that the company refuses to allow sick leave, even if the worker has a legitimate doctor’s note. Taking a day off sick, even with a note, results in a penalty point. A worker with six points faces dismissal.

– Made to work a compulsory 10½ hour overnight shift at the end of a five-day week. The overnight shift, which runs from Saturday evening to 5am on Sunday, means they have to work every day of the week.

– Set quotas for the number of items to be picked or packed in an hour that even a manager described as “ridiculous”. Those packing heavy Xbox games consoles had to pack 140 an hour to reach their target.

– Set against each other with a bonus scheme that penalises staff if any other member of their group fails to hit the quota.

I'm surprised the sicknote stuff is legal. Anyone out there got good ideas for Amazon-replacements ?


There's another thing. My son is waiting for the delivery of his new Acer netbook, sourced from Amazon. While awaiting I did a quick bit of googling for the delivery company Amazon use, Home Delivery Network.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

HDN tracking system said they had 2 failed deliveries, and had left cards each time. Funny how I was working in my hall the whole time, and never saw or heard a vehicle, no ring or knock at the door and certainly no cards. Amazon apologised and said they would "follow it up". Its difficult to NOT use HDN with Amazon, as they use it by default on many items, and you have no choice unless you upgrade to much more expensive shipping options. The lack of contact details of ANY KIND on their website just confirms their incompetence, as they obviously have far too many complaints to afford staff to man the phones or email relies. Avoid if you can...

In over 10 years of shopping online I have NEVER had to deal with a shower such as this company! I finally gave up on the call centre and phoned my local depot after the website was updated showing I had missed a delivery for the FOURTH time despite me being in all day.

08/03/2007 00:00:00 Customer Parcel Data Received
08/03/2007 19:30:01 Sort Centre - Shaw, Oldham Sorted
08/03/2007 23:42:00 Leeds Depot Received
09/03/2007 06:36:42 Leeds Depot Loaded onto vehicle
09/03/2007 09:40:02 Leeds Depot Unable to Deliver Carded
09/03/2007 13:48:23 Leeds Depot Received
09/03/2007 13:49:09 Leeds Depot Unable to Deliver Carded
12/03/2007 06:31:17 Leeds Depot Loaded onto vehicle
12/03/2007 14:06:28 Leeds Depot Received
12/03/2007 14:08:43 Leeds Depot Unable to Deliver Carded


I rang them and the guy on the other end was very unhelpful. making out like I had missed them and they would be trying again on Monday. Of course he wouldn't listen no matter how much I insisted no attempt was made to deliver the parcel and the same thing is going to happen on Monday.

I had been in all day and had no cards and heard nothing.

Well, you know what's coming. The beastie was recorded as leaving the depot for delivery at 7 this morn. No further update (and my son stayed in all day) until nine tonight, when finally the Amazon 'tracking' page updated.

Apparently the driver was 'unable to deliver' at 8.20 this morning - when I was still in the house and would have heard any delivery vehicle arriving. No one rang, no-one left a card. I get the impression the drivers have too much stuff to deliver and end up inventing 'failed deliveries' for those households they don't get round to. We stayed in till 7 tonight and left a note for the driver when we went out. We were wasting our time. Why wasn't the site updated in real time ? Don't they carry little digital, mobile-linked tablets to record failed deliveries as they happen ? Or do they wait till the driver's returned to the depot (having had plenty of time to think up plausible non-delivery scenarios) ?

There's a fortune to be made for the person who devises a decent delivery/tracking system, although nothing will avail if the company are screwing their drivers with too much work and the drivers are returning the compliment by lying about 'failed deliveries'.

Most of the delivery companies are incompetent to a greater or lesser degree. I must at this point give due to one of the senior guys at Initial Citylink. When my son's birthday present didn't arrive I phoned head office and actually got through to (I think) the sales director. He put me through to a regional manager - with the result that the manager of the depot where my son's gift was ended up putting it in the boot and delivering it personally on his way home ! He didn't look too chuffed about it either ...

Anyway, what think you ? Where can an ethical(ish) consumer turn to as an Amazon-alternative ?

Help !

It's the son's Christmas quiz, and parents are allowed to help - but this one's a killer.

Where's this building and what is it ? Not a good picture, but the street looks low-rise USA (or perhaps Aus/NZ) and by the shadows the picture's taken from the north, if the time on the clock is 5.40 (it's a bit blurred). It appears to be at the top of a rise, there's a small statue in front of the main clock tower, which appears to have a cross on top and also appears to close off the whole road. But the tower's main feature is the unusual top - bit like corn on the cob.

Has the air of a memorial. I'm sure I've seen the picture somewhere before, but Lord knows where.

The location begins with R. The strange top (despite the cross) made me think Rangoon, but I can't find anything like it on Google images. Tried Raleigh, Roanoke, Rostov, Riga, Rotorua, Rawalpindi, Rappahannock, Richmond. The US seems short of decent sized towns beginning with R.

Any ideas ?

Plastic Washing Bags / Laundry Bags

You know the things. Large, heavy-duty plastic bags, with plastic carry handles. They come in bright primary colours and you use them - or we do - to transport wet washing from machine to line or tumble-dryer.

You used to be able to buy them in supermarkets at about a quid a throw - but they seem to have vanished from the shelves everywhere. Laundry baskets take up too much space - you can't fold them up when not in use as you can a bag. Ours are ageing, splitting, losing the handles.

Where have they all gone ? Anyone know who sells them these days ?