I’m always a bit dubious over Clean-up tools without in depth knowledge how do you really know they’ve done their job? Of all these tools CCleaner seems the best of the bunch, for instance Web User awards the tool 5 out of 5 stars and PC Pro makes CCleaner its “software of the year” for 2008. I’ve used the tool and it certainly finds a bunch of errors in my registry. Be-aware, that it can be a little over enthusiastic in cleaning Windows (Vista in my case) removing recent document history and cookies that you might wish to keep, however you can tune CCleaner to keep these files, just remember to configure it before using.

In scenes reminiscent of Sunday League half-time’s Hull City’s manager, Phil Brown, kept his players on the pitch for a frozen half-time team talk.

“It was nice and cold out there and I thought it might keep the boys alive,” Brown said. “I felt they looked half dead in the first half. I also felt three or four thousand Hull supporters deserved an apology, some sort of explanation as to why we had been so bad in the first half, and it’s difficult to do that in the confines of a dressing room.” Source: Paul Wilson – The Guardian.

If you’re looking for a quick and relatively easy to use HTML editor then look no further than Front Page 2006.

The tool-set is impressive for a free editor. It has everything you would expect to see in a professional editor like Dreamweaver, including quick browser preview, rollover images, special character list, spell-check and thesaurus lookup, visual colour picker, and a style sheet link-up wizard. FP also has a built-in library of JavaScript modules that’s pretty extensive (450+ scripts); and its “Tidy HTML” tool actually does a decent job cleaning up HTML and converting it to XHTML.

Where FP shows its freeness is in overall site management tools, lack of auto-complete coding feature, and a mediocre FTP client. Don’t expect to build complex templates like you can in Dreamweaver or fly through your code writing with the tab key. Also, the PHP issue is a little perplexing. Other than that, I have no complaints. In my opinion, First Page is the best editor on this list. Source: Matthew Griffin – Mirificam Press.

There’s an option for a full unlock license key, which removes the “nag screen”, “activates to Fully Functional software”, “provides 24/7 priority email support” and “free product upgrades”, however to be quite honest Evrsoft’s support reputation is appalling and unless you want to send them a few bucks (actually quite a few bucks – $59.95 to be precise) to support future developments I wouldn’t bother.

In The Observer Miranda Sawyer poses a question, “what does it say about us that we finance gangs of photographers to stalk and harass young females out on their own?

I’m in Los Angeles, for work, and everything is as it should be: it’s warm, people are friendly and the other night my taxi nearly got smashed to the kerb by a phalanx of SUVs doing Formula One along Sunset Strip. Paparazzi on wheels. I’ve no idea who they were following, though I guess it was a young woman. The paps tend to be more circumspect with the older (more money to sue them) and the male (more likely to hit them). Plus, it’s pictures of youthful, beautiful so-called party girls that we, and therefore the papers, want to see.

A friend who lives here says that a well-respected American photographic agency almost had to file for bankruptcy recently. Why? The paps are taking all their business. Nobody wants pretty, set-up pictures of the gorgeous famous any more. We want them looking rubbish: chased, chastened, knickerless, mad. Hello, paparazzo!

And isn’t it great that there are so many celebrettes out there to give us the shots we love? After all, if you want to be famous, you can’t object to having your photo taken. You’ve sold your soul to the devil, you stupid slapper, and his only demand is that an army of puffa-jacketed mercenaries get to shove their long-nosed digital protuberances up your skirt every time you get in or out of a car.

Whenever I do research for an interview, I look up my interviewee on YouTube, to see how they talk. What I’ve found is that if that celebrity is out and about, it’s not them who are doing the chatting. It’s the paps. Those boys will say anything to get a good picture, a juicy action shot. Bitch, slut, slag are some of the printable epithets. There’s much worse. Examples? Kate Beckinsale, walking with her nine-year-old daughter from shop to car. One pap says something so filthily misogynistic to her that I’m not going to write it down. And she’s with her daughter!

Or Lourdes Ciccone and Rocco Ritchie, out without either parent, going to Toys R Us. Why are they being followed? They’re children! Poor old Britney practically has a section to herself: crying in a restaurant, lashing out with an umbrella, flipping the bird at a petrol station. And Lily Allen told me when I interviewed her recently that she was almost run over by a paparazzo who, when she complained, physically threatened her and told her he would ruin her life. None of his big-boy compadres came to Lily’s aid. They just carried on taking pictures.

The problem with the static paparazzi shot is you don’t know the circumstances in which it was taken. Is that girl crying because she’s split up from her boyfriend, or because a mob of strangers are calling her a useless see-you-next-Tuesday? Why is that one fighting in the street? Because she has a drug problem? Or because a gang of blokes told her she was ugly and her husband was shagging someone else? Ah, who cares: we just want a picture so that a magazine can put a red circle around her terrible skin, her disgusting wobbly bits, her tears.

What does it say about us that we finance gangs of middle-aged men to surround, stalk and harass young females out on their own? Do we really hate women that much? It seems we do. For there are more and more paparazzi out there: it’s one of the few growing businesses in a global credit crunch. In Germany, the tabloid Bild has joined with Lidl to offer its readers £60 still-and-video cameras so they can provide content. Well, why not? It’s not like you need training. Anyone can be a photographer. You just have to be willing to follow your prey and then, when you have them cornered, say the right thing to get a reaction. You’re beautiful, you’re gorgeous, you’re a slut, you’re a fat bitch, you’re a bad mother who deserves to see your children die. Whatever.

Go get ‘em, tigers! Source: Miranda Sawyer – The Guardian.

Yes – what are you saying to your daughters, and come to that your sons, when you buy these newspapers and magazines?

According to Google Picasa 3 is “the easy way to find, edit, and share your photos” and after around a month’s use it’s hard to disagree. The software’s easy to use and whilst it does nothing startling for all but the professional it does all you really need, plus there’s also a gigabyte of online storage – and the price – free. The down side – well if I’m being harsh one gigabyte isn’t a lot when it comes to photos however you can by additional storage 10GB costs $10 for a year rising to $500 for 400GB.

Sainsbury’s and Boots have recalled thousands of tubes of Colgate-branded toothpaste after discovering that the product was counterfeit.

The 100ml tubes labelled as Colgate Cavity Protection were sold in the chains’ outlets between 28 November and 5 December.
Which in household’s a bit late in, the five of us would probably have used up the tube by now.

Last year, Colgate found that separate batches of counterfeit toothpaste sold in several US states contained an illegal chemical thickening agent, diethylene glycol, which is commonly used in anti-freeze and solvents.

Sainsbury’s said today there was no risk to customer health from the fake product it had sold.

“We believe there are no health risks associated with using the counterfeit toothpaste but, as it is not a genuine Colgate product, we removed the affected tubes from our stores immediately,” a spokesman for the supermarket chain said. Source: The Guardian.

It’s nice they’re assuming there are no health risks – I wouldn’t be so sure.

“We believed the supplier we bought the toothpaste from was reputable, and we are carrying out a full investigation into how this has occurred so that we can prevent it from happening again.” Source: The Guardian.

It’s easy to prevent, stop believing and do some research when you’re buying – like anything if the price is too good to be true then it’s most likely a scam.

The financial crisis claimed another high street victim today when entertainment chain Zavvi fell into administration, putting 2,500 jobs at risk.

Ernst & Young formally took charge of Zavvi this morning, just two weeks after being parachuted into the former Virgin Megastore chain to attempt a rescue.

It said it would keep the music chain running while it tries to find a buyer.

Zavvi had been badly hit by the collapse of Woolworths, whose distribution arm, EUK, supplied it with DVDs and CDs. Woolworths’s demise left Zavvi short of stock as it entered the crucial Christmas trading period. In addition, it owed EUK £106m.

Like many other high street chains, Zavvi began offering large discounts at the start of this week in an attempt to get shoppers spending. Source: The Guardian.

The High Street is almost bereft of CD shops these day’s, of the mainstream, only HMV’s left and that’s really a games store these days.

The new U2 album, ”No Line On The Horizon” to be released on 2nd March will be released in five different versions ranging in price from £8.98 for the basic CD to £44.98 for the limited edition which includes a hardback book and DVD of a new film from Anton Corbijn featuring the music of U2. (Prices taken from Amazon UK) I guess that gives fans a couple of months to save up.

Hat Tip: NME.

The Guardian’s senior correspondent Duncan Campbell compares robbers and bankers.

The fortunes made in the City and the subsequent collapse have many echoes in the criminal world. Armed robbers enjoyed their heyday in the 70s, thanks to a combination of unsophisticated security in banks, a corrupt detective branch in Scotland Yard and a code of criminal conduct that eschewed informing. When all those three factors altered, many criminals looked for other, safer ways to make money. One popular scam was the long firm fraud. It works thus: you set up a business in a warehouse using a bogus name, you order goods and pay on time; repeat, for a much larger number of goods and pay again on time; repeat for a much, much larger amount and disappear.

In many ways, some of our financial institutions have in effect been carrying out a fantastically sophisticated long firm fraud, although that may not have been their intention at the outset. They asked people to give them their money, they paid out on time; they asked for more, and paid out again; then they asked for even more – and announced that they had nothing left. Essentially, a long long firm fraud.

…

But what’s to be done? It is 45 years now since the great train robbery. Here were a group of criminals robbing one of our venerable institutions, the Royal Mail. When they were caught, they had to be punished severely – and seven of the gang were jailed for 30 years, sentences far stiffer than those then given to murderers or serial rapists. In fact, one of the robbers – Ronnie Biggs – is still in prison, aged 79, and unable to communicate except by pointing at letters on a laminated sheet. Why he is not released on compassionate grounds is one of the many wonders of our justice system. But the point is this: an example was made of Biggs and his fellow robbers because they had caused such damage to an institution on which people relied. No one is suggesting that the chaps at the top of our collapsed financial institutions, who have been rewarding themselves so lavishly for so long, should join Ronnie in a cell in Norwich; well, not many people are. But here’s a thought: earlier this year the Assets Recovery Agency, which was employed to trace the proceeds of crime, was subsumed into the Serious Organised Crime Agency. During its brief existence, it did not, to be blunt, have a great deal of success, but it must know where money gets tucked away. Why not set it the simpler and more rewarding task of tracing the assets of the people whose irresponsibility and personal greed led to the collapse of the institutions where money was thought to be safe?

If, say, all assets in excess of what could be accumulated from a £1m annual salary and £1m annual bonus, were confiscated from those involved in the collapsed institutions and placed back in the public purse, would that not have an immediate beneficial effect on the economy? And would it not act, just like those 30-year sentences, as a wonderful reminder about how to behave? Source: The Guardian.

Why a million lets make it a half million.

Yes that’s swearing – read and you won’t disagree with me.

An eight-year old Saudi Arabian girl who was married off by her father to a 58-year-old man has been told she cannot divorce her husband until she reaches puberty.

Lawyer Abdu Jtili said the divorce petition was filed by the unnamed girl’s divorced mother in August after the marriage contract was signed by her father and the groom. “The judge has dismissed the plea because she [the mother] does not have the right to file, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty,” lawyer Abdullah Jtili told the AFP news agency.

The case was handled by a court in Qasim province, north of the Saudi capital Riyadh. The girl does not know she is married, said Jtili, adding that he will appeal.

In many child marriages, girls are given away to older men in return for dowries or following the custom by which a father promises his daughters and sons to marriage while still children. But the issue is complicated by different interpretations of sharia law and a lack of legal certainty.

“There is confusion in Saudi Arabia over the fundamental question of what constitutes adulthood,” said Clarisa Bencomo of Human Rights Watch. “There is also vast judicial discretion.” The case appears to fit a pattern of divorced fathers using their children to take revenge against their ex-wives. Mothers usually only have custody while the children are young.

Relatives said the marriage had not been consummated and that the girl was still living with her mother. They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage was not to be consummated until the girl turns 18 – although it was unclear how this could be enforced. The father agreed to marry off his daughter for a dowry of 30,000 riyals (£5,400) as he was facing financial problems.

Bencomo dismissed the idea that the girl would be able to file for divorce once she reached puberty since there was no standard definition of this. In addition, Saudi judges often insist that even adult women speak to them through a male guardian or lawyer.

No figures are available for the number of arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents in Saudi Arabia, where the strictly conservative Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common. But human rights groups say they are aware of many such cases.

Senior clerics, including Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s grand mufti, have denounced child marriage. But it is still prevalent in conservative areas. The Shura council recently defined adulthood as starting at age 18 but objections prevented it from being ratified as required by the council of ministers. Source: The Guardian.

I’m lost for words – unlike millions of Muslim women who aren’t allowed words.