Month: June 2006

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Rip-off Britain, BBC-style

I gave my girlfriend my TV. She doesn’t watch it either! You see, here in the UK we have to pay over a hundred quid a year for a “TV Licence” just to watch this junk – even if you only watch foreign channels via satellite!

If you don’t have a TV Licence then the TV Licensing Authority send you letters asking why you don’t have a Licence? Most of mine go in the goose-shredder, unopened. But I confess I sent the last one back with just two words written on it with my large webbed feet, in thick, felt-tip pen. The second word was “OFF”.

And we still have vans with ‘revolving roof racks‘ roaming the streets trying to catch those who watch but don’t pay!

Now, to cap it all, the silly sods at the BBC have just given a revolting, gobby moron called Jonathan Ross a £18-million, 3-year contract, 100% paid for by the Licence Payers!

Most of the Licence Payers I have discussed the matter with would happily club together and pay that just to have the guy assassinated!

Honk! Honk!

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Fed-up With Norton Antivirus?

Well, join the club! That horrid, resource-hogging monstrosity is the bane of my life. My advice? Dump Norton – if you can manage to uninstall the damned thing! My experience of Norton Antivirus is that it behaves much like the viruses it is supposed to protect you from…

  1. Uses lots of processing power.
  2. Stops other programs working properly.
  3. Difficult to remove.

So, for good, honest, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin, AV protection may I suggest the excellent, open source Clamwin instead. Seven good reasons…

1. It detects viruses that Norton misses.
2. It doesn’t hog all your resources.
3. It uninstalls cleanly if you don’t like it.
4. Its developer is honest about its shortcomings.
5. It’s free.
6. All its updates are free.
7. It’s not Norton.

Erm, try it…

http://www.clamwin.com/

If you need a software firewall then you might prefer Zone Alarm to Norton Firewall. The simple freeware version has kept my mum’s PC free of worms for years. Mother Goose does not like worms in her PC! And it’s pretty easy to understand & set up.

http://www.zonelabs.com/

Better, how about a hardware firewall? Your needs may be more complex than mine but I find the firewall that came free with my Netgear broadband modem/hub/router/wireless/make-the-tea thing does me just fine.

But then I’m a simple soul…