pap

Might have been mentioned before, but a mate of mine asked what happens when we play Stoke or Sunderland. Is there a 3rd kit?

And btw, I'm sure that the away kit will go down a storm with some of our less tolerant posters. After all, they get to shout "come on you whites" at away games

I've never been particularly precious about the stripes. My favourite kits are some of those that are a bit different. Loved the kits from 1980-1987. Not a massive fan of the Dimplex kit and the 87-89 kit is the sort of thing you'd use to scare the kids into tidying their bedrooms. This one? It's different from the stripes, sure. I doesn't look anywhere near as bad as our worst kits. My biggest problem is that it isn't the 1980s kit, but that's because I'm being selfish and want something of nostalgic value. The flip-side of that is current youngsters might have a kit that resonates with them in 20 or so years.

I have never been infracted, which is a surprise, as I can occasionally be a right t!t. Amazed I've never been pulled for sarcasm.

I'd agree with this. Apple pulling Flash from iOS was more to do with the suite of tools that Adobe were releasing at the time. In amongst the feature set was something which would allow Flash stuff to be compiled into iPhone apps. Apple were not happy with that. As something of a technical purist myself ( I'm not a fan of virtual machines, for example ) I can see the technical reasons for not wanting to allow apps falling under this umbrella. Native code always beats out an abstraction like Flash. Issues with Flash may have even undermined confidence in Apple's products ( i.e. bad Flash upgrade = your iPhone looks crap ). Most of us have had enough experience with Flash to know that the apps running on it don't always function as they should in all environments. I'm not saying that there weren't commercial considerations. If you're developing on iOS doing anything other than pure HTML5 dev, you basically have to have a Mac and an Apple developer's licence. If you're a consumer, all those Flash games on Kongregate, etc - are no good for you. You'll need to hunt down the iOS version (if it exists). So yep, some definite commercial consideration going on. That all said, I've never been a massive fan of Flash. It's a reaction to the limitations of the browsers of the day. One of the worst things that anyone can do, web-wise, is do an all Flash site. There is literally nothing for Google to spider.

Well, there are a couple of reasons for contemporary references. If they are just talking about the 20th Century, then it's normally to have a go at an aspect of contemporary life ( sky lords, war over money, ra ra ). If they go to modern times in some time travel caper, it's usually for budgetary reasons. Even so, they do a load of "made up" references too. Sisko buggered off to the 21st century and led a revolution. The old Khitimer accords. Wars with Romulans. It's not like there's a 300 year gap where nothing happened

I'm a Virgin Media customer too. No real problems with my setup, but they messed me around when I was getting broadband installed in my old dear's place. Wanted it in for last Christmas, ordered in November - had one cancellation which I could live with - but when they gave me a January date I lost my crap with them. Just said I wasn't going to proceed with the order if they couldn't sort it. Uncancelled almost immediately My recent experiences with Europcar have put them top of my list, though.

That's certainly one theory. I'm going with:- Coventry another place where dune has got a slap so therefore now hates.

I am a child of the 70s, so I believe I'm ahead of the curve

obsessedwithlabour.com

I've been playing this for a bit. Main character is a Demon Hunter, which is very much like the Hunter class in WoW. It is very good, although I'm approaching it as a former MMO player. Some of the ideas in it are so brilliant and so simple you wonder why no-one thought of it before. Best example of this is independent loot. That's right. Everyone gets their own loot. No crying over the Exceptional Halberd of Ultimate Drama. Finished it on normal, and am in the final act of Nightmare at the moment. Normal is almost insultingly easy. Nightmare is a good challenging difficulty level. Past that, I hear it's a lot of grinding and getting one-shotted.

Trek is a mess when it comes to time travel. On the one hand, you have the 29th century time-cops, Kirk buggering off to late 1980s to save whales and the Borg taking a trip to 21st century to wipe out humanity - which suggests that the preservation of the timeline is important. But then on the other, you have Mirror Universes, the episode Parallels (in which Worf travels through multiple dimensions happening at the same point in time) and of course, the recent movie - in which an entirely new timeline is fractured off from Spock's trip to the past.

Cov people are cool. Their city might look like a bag of arse, but they're very friendly.

Ah, Cameron only cared about looking good when he was outside of power. I think he's forgotten that he needs votes to retain it.

Hope doesn't come into it, TDD. You f**k someone about for long enough, and they'll eventually tire of it. That's all that's happening here.

Juvenile unit #2 is called Kira

Doesn't appear as if the young have much love for the Conservatives. Dangerous long-term play, imo. The Tories are obviously putting all their eggs in the pensioner basket. Not even sure that'll work, to be honest. First it assumes that all pensioners are self-interested and happy with their current lot. Next, you can only play that game for so long. Pensioners eventually pop off their mortal coil, whereas the young are going to be around for another 60 years. 2015 may be the last election that the Conservatives have a reasonable chance of winning. A lot of their support is literally dying off, and they're sticking two fingers up to the potential replacements.

From this issue of Private Eye: David Cameron's call for a cut in housing benefit for the under-25s may be popular with his backbenchers, but how many of them remember the last time a Conservative government tried something similar? In the late 1980s the Thatcher government introduced a range of benefit cuts for the under-25s, and withdrew income support for the under-18s, the idea being as now that they would have to move back home with their parents. However, many did not have a mum and dad, others had been forced to leave and some had left because of abuse. The result was a surge in youth homelessness. So it'd seem we've had a go at it before. Last time, it was under-18s, who as a group of people, are probably more able to return home than the under-25s up for consideration today. There is less time for family circumstances to change, such as parents moving to smaller place, etc. For the record, do we have anyone who supports the idea of removing Housing Benefit from the under-25s?

Then you've got a treat in store, Charlie. First two seasons are a lot of build up. The finale of that series two is really the starting point for the main arc of the series. I'd give it another go, sir. Much like TNG, Season 3 is where it really gets going.

Very interesting, Frank's cousin. Odd then, that once again, we're pilfering our reform platform from the US approach.

Both great characters and performances. Weyoun is of course, sci-fi legend Jeffrey Coombes. He also played Brunt on DS9 and one of the Andorians on Enterprise. Brilliant in the Frighteners. Not exactly sci-fi, but I reckon everyone on this thread would like that film too.

It is definitely one I return to again and again. Outstanding performance by Avery Brooks in that one. The one that is most influential for me was "Best of Both Worlds". That episode, more than anything else, is what really flipped my geek switch. Think I was 15/16 at the time.

I've heard different. My landlady in Ireland used to be an SDLP councillor, so we talk NI politics quite a lot. I asked her about Sinn Fein's political convictions beyond a united Ireland. Her view is that they are electoral opportunists, illustrating how they were on an anti-austerity ticket in the South while implementing cuts in the North. Obviously, you need to take the source into consideration. One of the things that annoys the moderate parties is that they worked a great deal to achieve the actual peace, yet the electorate went for relative extremists ( like SF and the DUP ) when they went to the polls. Funniest quip I've heard in NI:- "Racist? Not here. We're too busy being sectarian to be racist!" Not actually true though. Quite a bit of racial bother with Eastern Europeans a couple of years back in Belfast.

Cancellations of decent sci-fi shows are always a shame. Does actually put me off getting into stuff in S1 these days. I think reality TV has a lot to answer for. Getting a cameraman to follow a bunch of real-life morons is a lot cheaper than sticking a new Space Opera show on the telly (and blimey, do we need one).

One oddity over there is Londonderry/Derry. Any bus going there shows both names. Also, on work's "fun days", no-one is allowed to wear replica football shirts.