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After 5 pages and 46 posts (mainly) commenting on or answering poor performance poor functionality bugs, etc. with this forum system, I do not intend to e-mail the Managing Director of Archant. Clearly their IT capabilities speak for themselves. Their attitude to the users speaks for itself. Their relationship with their software suppliers speaks for itself. Their IT evaluation and planning speaks for itself. I now believe that the IT group had no contingency plan (as this would have been “activated” some time ago given the ongoing issues). Implementing such a change without a contingency plan is un-believably amateur (the sort of thing that gets IT a bad name). Unfortunately this is not unique in the history of IT failures, though most companies would have acted by now without having to get the Managing Director of the publishing company involved.

http://www.livingfrance.com/instantforum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=16&MessageID=43658&TopicPage=6 We no have tripple posting issues ! (Sorry I can't show the above as a URL but the forums software deas not support such features for me)

It is a fact that this site is a disaster due to poorly performing forum software. There are thus far fewer posts and it has generally become a lot less interesting. In the software industry there is an expression “fit for purpose”. I cannot understand why, after so much feedback from their users, the organisers have not put into place their contingency plan. Professional IT people always have such a plan when implementing something (such as a change to a new forum software). It would be unbelievably amateur for there not to have been one. There are other French interest forum’s “out there”. They work, have friendly people, interesting facts and discussion and I now spend time there rather than here. I’m afraid, apart from the fact that this forum has become a pain, frustrating, etc. I find LF’s attitude in doing nothing about it very disappointing. I know they have plans for the future, but this will not address poor functionality and software bugs. Most companies care about their users. In fact I only came back now because I got an e-mail about new posts. Otherwise I don’t bother anymore. from glancing at the list or "Members active in the last ..." and the number of posts I believe I'm far from the only one to go elsewhere.

I have one of those “tic-tac” devices (see http://www.livingfrance.com/instantforum/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=19&MessageID=51746) I got from the vet (come in packs of two, one large one small). Before that I’d use a drop of Frontline directly onto the tick. I also had previously thought that in the cold ticks could not be so active, but have been told by others that it is humid conditions that they love, so at the moment is a high risk time (under leaves, etc.). Good luck with your pup’s recovery (sounds like you caught it in time). I’m now starting to think more seriously about vaccination in addition to all the other precautions. I asked Merial (who manufacture the vaccine) about its actual reliability (even they say its not 100%) and they sent me some stuff in French which I cannot understand, so I have no idea it its 10% reliable (not so worthwhile level) or 90% (definitely worthwhile level). I have a resistance to pumping my pets full of drugs unless there is a real benefit.

My surprise was in relation to the amount of the fine. Had you taken the trouble to read what I had written you will have seen I said “government” and not “political party”. There is a big difference. I consider the level of fine somewhat high in relation to the offence, particularly where there are (as I pointed out) alternatives to ensure that safety, etc. is not being compromised. There is a general opinion that the positioning of large number of the speed cameras in the UK have little to do with road safety but are instead to generate revenue from fines. (Even a government watchdog has commented on this fact). My comment (phrased cynically) was that this appeared along the same lines. If you don’t like my comments then ignore then. I’m finished here.

Mine took longer than 2 months. Then when I tried to register with CPAM, there were errors on the form and I had to send it back and start again. I actually only asked for my E106 a couple of weeks before moving (as I moved at short notice) so left with an E111. This is meant to be wrong. When CPAM rejected my E106 I needed to see a doctor and asked what I should do. They asked if I had an E111 (which I did) and they told me to use that. When I said that I had heard the UK were getting a bit strict about people “mis-using” E111’s they basically said that it was them who refunded the costs and it had little to do with the UK. Anyway it was their (UK’s) fault for making a mistake on the form. However, be aware that an E106 (or E111) only gives you the same cover as a French person paying Social Security and not the same cover as you would get in the UK under the NHS. In many cases this means 70% of the cost refunded to you (prescriptions less, other stuff different). You can check what you would get on http://www.ameli.fr/. You may have problems taking out top-up insurance until you have registered with CPAM for which you will need an E106 (or the retirement form – whose number I don’t know) – others may have more info on this. Normally you take out “top-up insurance”. There are loads of other threads about this with posting from people who know much more about it than me. My response to your question is to use an E111. The only other option I can see is to delay your move until you get your E106 (which is not likely). Maybe somebody else has different experience or knowledge ? You also ask about a Residency Permit. I have assumed in the above that you are British Citizens. If that is the case you do not need a Residency Permit. Also, you do not need a Carte-de Sejour, etc. What you do need to register for depends on your country of residence/domicile. I suggest you check the Financial and Legal threads (I have very limited knowledge). You will probably need to register with CPAM (Health) and tax, hopefully others may make posting to correct me/add things.

And now to get political in a tread that has nothing to do with politics: This government needs all the revenue it can get as, with an election approaching it needs to spend money to help itself get re-elected. Things like this are often to generate revenue rather than ensure that people are driving safe vehicles with MOTs and insurance. If it were motivated by safety you would e.g. get a warning giving you e.g. 2 weeks to get a licence and requiring you to attend a police station with your documents. The amount of the fine is at the “we want your money” level.

I've noticed a few similar cases posted in the last few weeks (but its all a bit to slow to go back and find them, so I'll comment here). I appreciate that with locals it can be difficult to act in cases of animal cruelty. The risks of antagonism with locals are real and in a worst case scenario could make ones life very difficult. Near me there were a few horses, one of whom needed vet treatment but was not getting it. With a visiting local, we decided that the one route was to report it to the local vet (anonymously). I was lucky in that the French person did the reporting (fluent) so there was never any risk it would be associated with me as I have very poor language skills. In this case the local vet did then visit the same day but unfortunately was unable to go on the land without the owners permission. I don’t know where things went from there but it may be in some of the cases I’ve seen mentioned on this site, discussing things with the local vet may be a route to get some action taken without your neighbours knowing who started things.

Most companies developing things like forum software stay well clear of asp.Net. That is not to say that there may not be others (I don’t know of any), but there are a lot of companies out there. Its just that the “Microsoft route” is not popular for such things I personally think yaBB not great as, whilst it works fine, it has the “hobbyist” look and feel to it and almost certainly would not present the image LF are seeking. Which raises an interesting point; what sort of image does the current forum software present for LF. phpBB is basically “the industry standard”. asp.Net does not really feature anywhere. I keep posting to this thread and I’m not trying to cause problems – rather to help by trying to get the IT group behind it all do just do something. However, the situation this forum is now in a “classic failure of an IT Group”. It is causing the demise of the forum yet IT will do nothing. They have set a global “strategy” that is causing users problems as well as impacting LF’s reputation. What may damage LF’s reputation more is not the failure of the system but the fact that nobody is “big enough” to resolve the situation. I am aware that there is a planned hardware upgrade which is expected to address the performance issues. However, there will still be the bugs and feature constraints following the hardware upgrade. Others have explained that LF’s “hands are tied”. There is no point in having a web presence (in-house or external) if nobody uses it. LF (or rather its publishers) are a company and at the end-of-the-day, commercial interests must take priority over IT “strategy”. If a company cannot recognise that then it has grater problems that a forum that does not work.

Any IT group, when implementing a change to a system always has a “contingency plan”. I.e. what to do if it goes badly wrong. Contingency planning is part of being an IT professional. The number of users on the site is dropping off fast. The number of posts seems to be dropping fast. Should this trend continue then it is possible the forum will become used by the few rather than its previous broad contributor base. The performance is only one issue, the bugs and functionality issues will not be resolved by a hardware upgrade. I would suggest that LF seriously consider implementing their contingency plan.

A previous post referenced costs of the forum software. I have no knowledge of the particular software being used. However, the “forum standard” software phpBB is free. phpBB is used by many (some massive) forums and provides a high level of functionality and performance. Less used (but also free) is yaBB. Not quite as nice a user interface as phpBB decent performance, decent reliability and free. I thus think it unlikely that LF/Archant paid for the current forum software (which is not phpBB).

One aspect that may be helping things is that I recon there are far fewer people logged-on at any one time. There used to regularly be two (or more ?) lines showing the names of current users. Now most of the time it is a single line. Also, I recon there are far fewer posts being made, which should speed things up. However, many of the (fewer) posts seem to be being duplicated by the forum software which is now making some threads difficult to read (as you can get e.g. Post A, Post B, Post C, Post B again, Post c again. Because of speed and functionality issues I think people just are not bothering any more - which ironically is helping the speed (but not the software bugs). I'm now finding it such "hard work", much of the enjoyment of visiting this site has gone and other French forums seem to be working, have lively and informative thread to the point I'm now asking myself "why" ?

Glad to hear things are moving towards a recovery and wish you all well through the continued recovery process. I have been concerned about this (and other diseases) and have found it difficult to always establish exactly what the risks are and what precautions are appropriate. You have thus prompted me to start a new thread about Dog Disease Risks, hopefully with other contributions it might make us more aware about the different risks in the different areas of France (and may alter others to the fact that there are these risks). I checked in the UK with my vet before moving and was told that there were no additional risks to those in the UK. I happened to find out about Piroplasmose and Lyme by chance whilst visiting my French vet. I’m sure there must be others who are not fully aware of the risks in the different areas of France.

The idea of this topic is for people to post information about the risks to dogs in different areas of France. My personal experience is that whilst my local vets are excellent, they tend not to volunteer information – you have to ask them and to ask them you have to know about things. For example, I live in dept 37/72 and have been unable (so far) to find out if Heartworm is a significant risk or not. Sometimes, just knowing the French name for a disease can help people. Before leaving the UK I checked with my vet about anything my dogs should be vaccinated against (in addition to standard stuff and obviously rabies) or any precautions I should take and they said nothing additional. PIROPLASMOSE RISKS IN FRANCE For example, the risk of Piroplasmose is published by Merial (the company that manufacturers the vaccine and can be found at http://fr.merial.com/pdfs/prevention/Leaflet_PIRODOG_tryp_ok_2_quest.pdf This link has a map of France and shows the risk in each department based on reported incidence.

Quote: "You'll have to cut and paste the link as this forum software doesn't like Macs" Doesn't like me either and I've got a PC. Actually I don't think it likes anybody.

I have been told that French employers often prefer to employ a French person who has worked in business in the UK. The reason I was told was that such a person has probably learnt a bit more of the “cut and thrust” of British business, the long hours and hard work (no 2 hour lunch breaks), etc. Whereas somebody who has only worked in France may be more used to the “relaxed” way of doing business, clock-on/off at the fixed working hours, long lunch breaks, etc. I’m sure that if the above is true it is a trend rather than a really strong factor, but may be a factor in encouraging younger French people work in the UK for a bit (improves their job prospects in France).

[quote]A joke is a joke, but the guy in Chelsea this week who tried to stop a burglar and was stabbed to death wasn't laughing.[/quote] I had not heard that story but it makes things a difficult balance. Had the person injured the burglar, then it seems the burglar would have had the right to sue the person he was committing the crime against. One argument is that if you chose to do something you also accept the risks associated with doing it. If you break into someone’s house, then you take the risk that they will defend themselves and their property. The burglar has decided to take that risk before undertaking their crime. They have put themselves outside the law – so why do they have the right to sue the homeowner ? I can accept that there needs to be a "reasonable limit" to the victim's response. Clearly it would not be acceptable for a somebody to shoot a pickpocket. Likewise, if somebody is threatening you with a gun, they have to expect a stronger reaction that being asked politely to leave." When burglars carry guns, the situation is somewhat aggravated and the risk increase – but hurt the person breaking into your house and you can end up in court. Have things in the UK gone a bit too far towards protecting the burglar.

Found Jardiland sells Hills. There are several Jardiand’s round me (37 and 41) and they are big stores but do not know how widespread they are.

I agree. Having worked in IT for too many years it always bugs me a bit when IT people lose sight of the entire reason for their existence – the users (employees, customers, suppliers, etc.). Forget about them and there is no point to what IT is doing. I have seen it in many companies (and probably been guilty of it myself) – you become wrapped-up in “architecture long term strategic implementation planning ….” and the users suffer. I realise I might be a little bit “outspoken” but if LF want a forum, better to have one that works than one that doesn’t. If their own internal IT resources cannot provide one then go elsewhere.

If LF are constrained by their publishers IT groups inadequate performance, they can look at having the forum hosted externally by a 3rd party company. This is neither expensive nor difficult and can be seamlessly integrated into the main LF “traditional” web site.

Interesting and please do not take any of my comments as being critical of individuals working for LF. However, you made reference to “was imposed upon us by Living France's publishers' IT people, who insist that ASP.ne t (a Microsoft system) is the only way to go”. This is the classic scenario of IT “long term strategic architecture …” (and many thousands of other buzz words). A previous comment I made (very dull one) was that IT groups can often select “strategies” for their convenience rather than to meet user functionality. Putting it bluntly, such IT groups are generally expensive, invariable destructive (in that they have a very negative effect on users) and, in my experience should be changed. They are not helping LF but are rather hindering it. Any IT group that “imposes” an inferior solution on a group of users (either internal or external) is not meeting the aims of IT. I can say with 100% confidence that Microsoft is not the only way to go. This IT group is absolutely wrong in saying Microsoft is the only way to go – it is merely one of many ways to go. Many successful companies do not go “the Microsoft route” (remember that Apple, Sun, IBM, etc. are all running successful businesses and they are not all Microsoft). Whilst there are no requirements about subscribing to LF to participate in the forum, LF might want to remember that many participants will be LF subscribers and the quality of the form is reflecting of the company (all be it “some publisher’s IT group’s fault).

I believe the forum software you/LF have selected is uses Microsoft SQL Server as the database to store everything. MS SQL Server properly supports Transactions and “roll-back” recovery. Thus a properly written application (in this case the forum software) should be able to recover in the case of an error (as it would never issue the commit and there would be a “rollback”). Without knowing exact (and boring) details I can only guess/

I cannot use italic, bold, colours or anything just plain text - because although I use a PC I do not use Internet Explorer. Other forum software systems allow formatting, etc. from non-Internet Explorer browsers (which thus support MAC's, Linux, Unix, etc. as well). From your response you have noticed that you can only “quote” the first few lines of a message (the forum software decides how much to include. On other forum software systems (e.g. phpBB) you can select which text from which messages you want to quote. When answering several points from one (or more messages) you can properly quote the texts you are responding to properly within your message. When you get an e-mail notification about a reply, the e-mail link takes you to the top of the first page of the thread. Other forum software is a bit smarter about these links and take you to the page containing the message the e-mail is notifying you about. Some systems will even scroll the page to the exact message. Some forum software will use the e-mail notification link to de-activate and re-activate e-mail notification. This means that for a popular thread you only get one notification that says “you will not receive further notifications until you visit the link”. The link in the notification e-mail takes you to the topic and “silently” re-enables the notification e-mails. This feature stops you receiving loads of notifications for the same thread. And the list goes on. Many of these features are relatively minor. However, it is often the minor features that make a bit of software a pleasure to use. With such “convenient” features people tend not to notice they are using a bit of software and can concentrate on the information and what people have written (basically the software just “gets on with it” and “does the right thing”). This LF forum software has all the signs of an immature software product. If you compare its “offering” to even some of the more entry level forum systems (e.g. the “open source” free YaBB system), it is weak. Whilst I’m sure subsequent revisions will improve, so will its competitors (it’s a “race” and the others have not a significant head start”). The architecture the forum system developers have selected has imposed constraints on where they can go. Again I note that we do not pay for use of this forum and thus are in no position to be critical.

I renewed mine whilst in France. I discussed how to do this with the British Consulate (as I had no alternative ID). They said they issue a new passport within 5 working days (took a bit longer in practice but it was within 2 weeks). I was given two options: visit the nearest British High Commission (which was at that time a Honary Consul in my nearest city – though he (and most other more local consuls seems to have disappeared now). He would validate my application and I could keep my passport. I would then need to collect my new passport from him. Alternatively, provided my appearance has not changed too much since my last passport (which was stretching things), nobody needs to validate your application/new photo. You just send in your old passport with your application and it all goes through OK. Contact: British Embassy (Passport Office) 18bis rue d’Anjou, 75008 Paris Tel: 01 44 51 31 00 or 01 44 51 31 02 (*) Fax: 01 44 51 31 27 http://www.britishembassy.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1059132503646 You can download (PDF format) and print-out the application form.

I'm sure I don't remember it being like this when running the previous forum software (or am I being “blinkered” ?) Also, from memory I cannot see any great new features in this forum software. In fact as a non Internet Explorer user I recon I'm worse off. Again, am I forgetting any previous frustrations ? Over the last week or so I have the impression that there are fewer postings - again, I have not counted and its just an impression. Do other people have the same/similar or totally different opinions ? However, it has to be said, it is free, we don’t pay for using it, so I hesitate about being too critical.