McPhee

Pretty much what I was about to write there, fish. I do find myself pondering who is right in all of this though. If Israel do remove all sanctions from Gaza would it really jeopardise Israeli security? Is the idea that they're at war with the whole of the Arab world a hangover from it's inception as a state? Are Hamas fighting for freedom, or do they want to destroy Israel and reclaim lost lands? There's no way of knowing. Stepping back from Gaza could be the right thing to do, or it might be the biggest mistake Israel ever makes.

If I was picking the best tracks by those bands then yeah, I'd have done the same. Getting the whole thing to fit together made me change stuff though, the 60's really weren't that great so choices are a bit thin on the ground up to 68. By the 60's (imo) Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles et all who were big in the 50's had lost it a bit, some very poor albums. That leaves The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Yardbirds for the majority of the 60's. Not really a fan of The Yardbirds or Beachboys so it was either double dip or go with early Stones/Beatles/Who tracks. Might move Led Zep though, having the Jackson 5 in '69 is a bit of a disgrace given how good a year it was.

What I'm saying is that Israel's actions towards the flotilla are irrelevant and not the issue. The blockade is there and they enforced it. The unfortunate events that happened on-board the ship are down to the activists who shouldn't have been there and who shouldn't have started a fight with Israeli troops. The issue is the legality of the blockade and the wider issue of Israel's attitude toward Gaza. Different discussion. While the flotilla takes the limelight in the media there will be no focus on the real problems in the middle east and what our role should be in resolving them. Personally I think it's time we (along with our allies) distance ourselves from Israel. The whole situation is a disaster and there will be no resolution while Israel maintains strong links with Western nations. The Israelis hold too much influence (certainly in the US) for a fair resolution to be met at the moment.

I've heard reports of O2 doing handsets for existing customers at cost. Not sure if they'll do it on the iPhone, but they're currently doing the HTC Desire for £275. If not it'll be the £450+ that they'll be charging for the PAYG handset.

The blockade's legality doesn't excuse the stupidity of the activists. Legal or not the blockade was there, they new it was there and they will have had a good idea of the consequences of crossing it. They still crossed it. Heck, they went one step further, they crossed it and then attacked Israeli troops. I've got no sympathy for them at all. I can't help but think it was all one big publicity stunt. I would agree that the blockade shouldn't be there and does need removing though.

If upgrades are the same as last year then you'll have to buy out your contract. On Vodafone it's the remaining line rental (before VAT) minus 25%. The free upgrades for original iPhone users was an unusual one, not something I think networks will repeat tbh.

60 - Ray Charles - What I'd Say 61 - Ben E. King - Stand By Me 62 - The Beatles - Twist and Shout 63 - Bob Dylan - Blowin' In The Wind 64 - The Kinks - All Day 65 - The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction 66 - The Who - My Generation/Land of Hope and Glory 67 - Albert King - Born Under a Bad Sign 68 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower 69 - The Jackson 5 - I Want You Back 70 - James Brown - Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine 71 - Led Zeppelin - Rock & Roll 72 - Stevie Wonder - Superstition 73 - Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road 74 - Bob Marley and The Wailers - No Woman No Cry 75 - Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run 76 - The Eagles - Hotel California 77 - The Stranglers - No More Heroes 78 - Kraftwerk - The Robots 79 - Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough 80 - AC/DC - Back In Black 81 - Human League - Don't You Want Me 82 - The Jam - Town Called Malice 83 - David Bowie - Let's Dance 84 - Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes 85 - A-Ha - Take on Me 86 - Bon Jovi - Livin' on a Prayer 87 - Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up 88 - New Order - Blue Monday [88] 89 - Neil Young and Pearl Jam - Rockin' In The Free World 90 - Sinéad O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U (hate this song, but I can't find anything better) 91 - Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit 92 - R.E.M. - Man On The Moon 93 - Lenny Kravitz - Are You Gonna Go My Way 94 - Blur - Parklife 95 - Oasis - Wonderwall 96 - Ocean Colour Scene - The Riverboat Song (sacrificial lamb, odds on this will get changes for a Spice Girls track) 97 - The Prodigy - Firestarter (would be Smack My Bitch Up, but there's kids around...) 98 - Madonna - Ray Of Light 99 - Fatboy Slim - Praise You 00 - The Strokes - Last Night 01 - Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger 02 - Coldplay - Clocks 03 - Outkast - Hey Ya 04 - The Killers - Mr Brightside 05 - Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. 06 - Gnarls Barkley - Crazy 07 - Pendulum - Blood Sugar 08 - Vampire Weekend - A-Punk 09 - Florence & The Machine - Rabbit Heart 10 - Plan B - Stay Too Long That's what I've got so far. Had to stick with reasonably well known tracks because it's for my Dad's 50th birthday do, there's a lot of people from a lot of different age groups coming. Some years I was kinda stuck and just went with the best I could find and others I've been spoilt for choice and went with one song per artist to sort that.

Which is why I'm asking for help. The draft I did was pretty much my taste in music with a few token variations in there. It read like a 'Rolling Stone Magazine' best of. I'm hoping for some suggestions to bump up the variation

Got a challenge for N-E. I've been told to come up with a playlist of songs, one song for each year since 1960. Unfortunately my knowledge on older non-rock stuff is kinda lacking so I'm struggling to get variation in there. Anyone feel like giving me a hand? A whole 50 songs, a decade or just a few suggestions (with year) would be welcome I had a draft playlist that I was going to post up - but I've just deleted it Second time I've done that now! Guess it's start from scratch time...

Don't care about the NDA myself. What will they do? Ban my account? The game's shit. I like the concept, but the MMO elements ruin it. It's the usual story; the players who play the most get the best kit and then proceed to shit all over everyone else. They don't have to be any good at the game, they just have to have stupid amounts of free time. I found it rather annoying as a newbie, once I got in to the full game I was pretty much useless! It seriously felt like my character was carrying a spud gun rather than an actual weapon. I can get the drop on people easily enough, but killing them is a different story. A lot of the time I find myself dropping a few rounds in to the back of someone's head to then be killed in one hit by that same guy. Lame. There's also not really a lot of variety in the missions and I'm not keen on the game's setting. Too Crackdown-like, but not as interesting to look at.

That $4 Billion figure isn't really the full story. That's including R&D costs, which will have been sky-high. Cell, Home, PSN, the boomerang controller and the PS3 itself will all have cost a lot of money to make. Factor in the loss they made initially on each unit sold (around $100) and it's not surprising that the figure adds up to $4bn. It's very much similar to Microsoft's first Xbox, they made a huge loss on it but at the same time they put down a lot of the ground-work for future products. Sony aren't loosing money on the PS3 now and that $4bn loss is behind them. They're arguably stronger for it. Cell is the big mistake though, that thing cost billions, caused Sony to have to cut the GPU down on the PS3 and has so far proved useless for anything else. Now that Intel have caught up it was a pretty useless venture full stop.

Got to say, I find you wrong here. Some apps are far better than the web-site, while others are supplementary. National Rail, for example, is far better than any rail website for train times. The UI is slicker, it's faster and it includes more info (live updates to train times and platform information). Nat West is an example of a supplementary app. It won't replace the Nat West website, but it's far faster/more convenient to use than loading up the web site if you just want to check your balance. Talking in general "not just Apple" terms here I do think apps are the future of the web. Currently they're held back by the limitations of the small, portable devices that they appear on, but once they move on to larger devices there's potential for the functionality to match the web-sites but with a slicker UI. I was reading an article a few days ago that was going through a book that Bill Gates wrote in the early 90s. In it he predicts that the web won't be around forever, it's an unstable mish-mash of technologies that have all been adapted to work in ways that they were never designed to in the first place. It does look like that's starting to become the case. It won't happen quickly, but the web could well be replaced by a more targeted, purpose built solution. On the iPad specifically, I don't think it's "the future of computing". It's just too limited. It's not the device Apple needed to release if they want to achieve that goal. They should have come up with something half way between iPad and iMac, instead of the giant iPhone. Doesn't mean I don't think the iPad is a good device in it's own right though, there isn't a single device out there that can compete with it as a portable media device. The battery life is insane and the screen is really good quality. Take the iPad, make it a little thicker, bump up the battery capacity, swap in ARM's new dual core chip and load on Android or MeeGo and I'll be in the queue. A device like that could well be the future of computing.

I'm struggling to remember the whole list. But this is what I have so far;

Battlefield 3. Please. This year.

I got over $4900 this evening on my bounty and then died. Was so annoyed! Completed the story now. The ending... bah! Glad it's done, was really beginning to drag and it definitely sets itself up nicely for a sequel.

It breaks. A lot. Large return/repair rates on them. Build quality is rather shoddy, which is unfortunate because the keyboard is pretty good.

Steal one? Travelling around is a pain without a horse, and catching a new one is much easier if you "borrow" someone else's to do the job If you can't find a horse then steal the fast-travel carriage. I've had no issues at night. Could be people's TVs. It's not just brightness setting, some TVs are really bad at showing detail in dark scenes (which would explain the issues).

It'll easily manage it. Got a similar set-up here but with a Q9505, all running on a 300W PSU. Works fine. When I installed the Quad I checked to see how much power it's drawing from the mains at full load, 310W. A review measured the efficiency of this power supply at 86%, so that means the PSU is supplying around 266W. That's near the limit, but the system will rarely get near full load and won't go over that figure. 400W for Strider's system will easily be enough.

Looks good to me. Amazing value for money with a lot of upgrade potential.

I'll let you know. Certainly don't want any money for the cable and I doubt it'll cost any meaningful amount to post so it's probably a no.