Richardbk

The Vigor2820v would work fine in France BUT you would need to get your VOIP from another supplier. It does not matter who provides the VOIP, but it must be SIP compliant. It could be a UK, US or french company. It depends on what telephone number you want( Uk, french or other country) and of course the package. e.g I'm using sipgate.co.uk and draytel.org which are payg services, but you can get all in deals with companies such as vonage. Since the VOIP is running over the internet your number is virtual. E.g it can be sat in your home in france and appear with caller id as a UK line, or you could get a French VOIP supplier to provide a french number. With vonage, your charges to both uk and france, and other countries would be included in an unllimited plan or cost the same/minute when using a payg operators.

The problem is that the orange(FT) VOIP is not standard so if you want their VOIP phone you have to have the livebox. Another option is to take orange's internet only option and then take up VOIP with another provider that uses a standard protocol. That way you get to keep the draytek, which is a superior modem to the livebox, and you are not tied to orange for VOIP - you can change VOIP providers as you wish.

As said above orange Uk UMA should work globally. There is a YouTube video of some chap using it in Peru.

BTW SFR provide the exact same box, BUT of course it is connected to the SFR servers and your phone will be seen as "Roaming" as it will be seeing an "SFR" GSM signal.

OK, I see what you want to do ... The only way I see is to install the Sure Signal box on your broadband in france (as this provides the "Vodaphone" GSM to wifi bridge, but my understanding is that vodaphone check the connecting IP address - and perhaps will block non-uk IP addresses - doh ! . If so to get round this you'd need to have a permanent router to router VPN connection to somewhere in the UK and the Sure Signal VPN (to vodaphone servers) would run over the top. You should set the VPN connection to only take the sure signal traffic, otherwise the rest of your internet would run slow. Also with VPN running over VPN not sure how is this would be terribly efficient. I have heard previously that the sure signal VPN connection is not that reliable, although perhaps now it has improved. There are various routers that will provide an end to end VPN including netgear and draytel - you'd need one at both ends.

Yes it exists. E.g with orange it is call unik - see here http://www.dslvalley.com/adsl/telephonie/unik-orange.php there is something similar with SFR. I suspect however they are not compatible with uk contracts. Even orange uk and orange FR don't seem to have reciprocal or seamless services :(

Phone up BBC Top Gear. They usually have interesting ways to get rid of caravans. ;-)

The main problem, is that whilst it is very nice for every village to have its own primary school, it is really not cost effect, but in my experience trying to get communes to work together to invest in a single school with better facilities for all is nigh impossible. We had to club together with other parents and take in electric heaters one year, when the heating went off for a couple of weeks. In one RPI we had the situation where all the kids travel to another school for lunch, meaning that they get about 10 mins lunch break - the rest of the time is spent on the bus !

I found this on the ministry site. http://media.education.gouv.fr/file/Espace_parent/09/2/guide-parents-maternelle_43092.pdf chapter 1 : "Lorsque votre enfant est inscrit à l'école maternelle d'une commune d'accueil, il a droit d'y effectuer toute sa scolarité maternelle" I see this is being discussed on anothe forum and somebody has posted the following link also http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/F1865.xhtml " l'enfant inscrit en école élémentaire dans une commune d'accueil a le droit d'y effectuer toute sa scolarité élémentaire" so as I was old it seems that they use the actual school rather than then cycle to implement the law.

you are right. cycle 1 is PS+MS and cycle 2 is GS,CP,CE1, cycle 3 is CE2, Cm1,CM2. However, I was told by a french colleague that for the purposes of schooling outside the commune, it is done on maternelle, and primary. However, this is France and of course there maybe different interpretations.

La scolarisation d'un enfant dans une école d'une commune autre que celle de sa résidence ne peut être remise en cause par l'une ou l'autre d'entre elles avant le terme soit de la formation préélémentaire, soit de la scolarité primaire de cet enfant commencées ou poursuivies durant l'année scolaire précédente dans un établissement du même cycle de la commune d'accueil. Once in maternelle, or in primary the parents can choose to go to a different school, but the mairies can not force you to move. E.g if you are already in petite or moyen section you can stay until end of grand section , and if you are already in CP you can stay until end of CM2. There is however no obligation on the mairies to let you stay in the other school when going from Grand section to primary. E.g they could make you change (unless you have another reason such as another child in the initial school)

[quote user="murphyworm"]thanks for all the replies. My son is in Moyen and my daughter grand. [/quote] OK, so they can not force you to move your son until the end of Grand Section (e.g end of school year 2012/2013).

[quote user="murphyworm"]hi has anyone moved to an ajoining village to where the kids are already in school, to find out they HAVE to attend the school in the new village? is there a way I can keep my kids in the same school they are in now???[/quote] What classes are they in .The mairie can only force a change at the end of Grand section and at the end of CM2. In addition if one child is already in the school the mairie can not force the other child into a different school. This is written into law code d'education articles L212-8.

What VPN client are you using ? is this something that you previously had on XP that you have now installed ? There were a lot of issue with some VPN clients on 64bit but most have been updated to run on 64 bit. Maybe you just need to download a new version.

[quote user="lisa"] If you want him to go to a different school I think you have to ask for a 'derogation'.[/quote] For both college and now primary(from this year) you can choose your school as long as the chosen school has places and agrees to take the child. The académie will provide the necessary derogation, but it is now more a rubber stamping exercise.

o

remember that if you have an internet connection you can also listen to Radio 4 24/7. www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 then select "listen"

You should ask for copy of the PLU, then you will able to see where you can build and where you can not build. BTW farmers can not build everywhere either. The PLU will have areas designated as completely forbidden, areas for farm buildings, areas for domestic dwellings etc. One of the more recent problems is that many villages have only recently created in the last few years PLUs so many residents are unaware of some of the changes to land brought in compared to the previous planning system (POS = Plan d'Occupation). Some of these are local (mairie instigated) changes but some can be related to the departement policy, national parks, forests etc.

And it is worse, because the employers that have come from the same system have been brain washed into thinking that qualification X is only suitable for job/career Y. There is little opportunity in France to switch careers once those decisions are made at 15-16. In France the job offer is primarily based on paper qualifications, rather than potential and past work performance.

[quote user="Martin963"]Richard bk said (I can't get the quote system to work):- No it isn't. Not for those on the very basic (Option 1) package, such as people like us who think BT charges are a rip-off (12.5 p set up charge for each call for example). http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumer/assets/downloads/BT_PhoneTariff_Residential.pdf pg 5. Sorry to nit pick. Incidentally, FT are saints compared to BT. Last October FT made all calls within France local tariff, whilst BT have recently (as far as I can see) abandoned the old geographical local system entirely and a call to next door is charged at full national rates. Of course one can take out one of their "packages" but for those of us who have watched them rip off all and sundry over the years....no, can't do it. [/quote] This is more a general complaint of BT. My post was about alternatives to 0844 using what is available. BT call set up fees are the same for 0844 as they are for 0845. For non BT plans 0845s have a cheaper flat rate than 0844 and in addition these drop considerably at weekends and evenings. BTW I'm not a supporter of BT. I moved my uk local line number to a VOIP service to get away from their ridiculous prices. PS - why doesn't this forum process quotes properly (I'm using chrome)

yes WC system fill is usually 3/8" . "strap on boss" come in various sizes. For 100mm usually 32,40 and 50mm. Note that in france they are called "selles" and they are glued in position using standard PVC glue which sets in a couple of minutes - never yet seen a strap on one yet, but does not mean they dont exist. http://www.raccords.com/catalogue2.php?gamme=919

it costs between 35 and 40p / minute to call a 0844 number from a uk mobile. Better to have a local number (that can be included in mobile tarif). BT no longer charge for calls to 0845 numbers so friends and family pay zero.

[quote] I have decent speed, a UK number for friends/business and the package price is reasonable. I am happy with them, what more can you ask? [/quote] The teleconnect UK2U SERVICE (which provides a UK number) is run over VOIP, but at €4.50/month it is very expensive. sipgate.co.uk, draytel.org and others will give you a Uk 0845 or a local UK number for free. 0845 is free for UK land line callers, whereas a local uk number would be included in the minutes of a uk mobile user. When these numbers are routed to a VOIP box/ phone in your house it costs nothing to receive the call- e.g UK call end to end = €0. If routed to a another french landline it would be around 1.7p/minute. Sipgate also provides a nice feature called phone forward/hunting that allows calling successive numbers for user-defined periods of time in turn until one picks up. In addition you can get smart phone apps such as SIP Acrobits that allows you to receive/make calls from your uk number, running over Wifi and 3G, although in the latter case you are likely breaking your mobile contract conditions. We have set up a number of uk 0845 and local numbers with the above and the call quality is excellent. BTW If you wish you can even move your uk house phone number to one of these suppliers, so friends, family, clients don't even need to update their contact lists. Your uk phone will ring in simultaneously in france, in the uk, on your mobile or wherever it is forwarded to.

If it has a camera on the front and back it is an iphone 4. If not and it is able to receive 3G it is an iphone 3GS. If not and it has a plastic case it is a 3G. If not plastic case (metal) it is very early model simply called Iphone. On the phone select "settings" => "general" => "about" to get the details of the phone. for identification see also http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3939?viewlocale=en_US

if the iphone "locked" to a current provider, then this needs to be removed. In the UK, the providers will unlock the phone after a certain contract period or until the contract is expired. I think with O2 for example they will unlock a contract phone or a PAYG phone after 18 months. for O2 it used to be free to unlock a contract phone and £15 to unlock a PAYG phone. Simply phone up the provider and ask for an unlock. The unlock is done between the provider and Apple and no code or manipulation on the phone is required. If the phone is subsequently connected to Itunes it will come up as being unlocked and will accept a new SIM card. I would not recommend the "jail breaking" technique for the uninitiated and non-technical as it >>could