Mazan

I know that personal email addresses are available form all and sundry but I wish to keep my existing ones and existing bookmarks held in AOL, that's why I wish to remain with them The AOL bookmarks can be exported and used in IE.   As for your perceived diasdvatges Not perceived: fact. AOL uses nonstandard email that results in many messages to and from AOL simply not getting through. This is especially so in France. This also prevents you from using most email clients other than the AOL one. AOL uses nonstandard internet protocol that results in many webpages being unavailable to AOL users. AOL uses nonstandard dial-up procedures that prevent many modems (especially modem/routers) from working. AOL is always slower than a regular internet connection for non-AOL use. The list goes on. AOL9 has taken some small steps towards reducing these incompatibilities and about time too.   I ahve been with AOL for six years now and see no reason to ditch what is to me a satisfactory service I'm glad you like AOL and of course it is entirely up to you whether you use them or not, but this makes no difference to the facts. I should also add that the "tout compris" connection procedure described above does not work for everyone. It seems to be OK for about 50% of users, or less. The others get a supplementary bill. I've never managed to work out what the difference is between those for whom it works and the others.

 there is a considerable number of things we use linked with aol, personal email addresses, bookmarks etc Bookmarks are a feature of IE and have been for years. AOL copied them. Personal email addresses are available from most ISPs these days. AOL has many disadvantages and few advantages.

Strangely, after I posted the original message, I stayed on this site for about 25 mins and didn't get cut off.  So perhaps it is to do with traffic at certain times of the day.  Like Clair, my connection speed is always very slow too so maybe contacting France Telecom about the line is the next step. The fact that the icon disappears indicates that the modem has cut off. This could be due to a bad line or indeed to an unsuitable modem though your constant low speed would suggest a bad line. External serial modems like the Olitec one do work far better than internal PCI modems. I wonder also if you have the "caller waiting" service on your line? This will throw most modems.

Any email that makes no sense, or appears to advertise something that you didn't ask for, should simply be deleted without hesitation. Never click on anything in such an email: just delete it. In OE you should ideally turn off the preview pane (view: layout) and should delete suspect emails before even opening them. Ensure that all your critical Windows updates are indeed up to date. www.windowsupdate.com

Is ther anything youn havent read up on Mazan? you really do seem to know everything about everything. There are innumerable subjects about which I know nothing. Things I do know about I tend to know about in some depth. There are no subjects about which I know everything.

People reading this may think that this is a personal crusade,it isn't,its my personal disgust at a man who attacked me when all i asked for was information to continue my personal WAY OF LIFE. Not his. MINE. The crux of the problem with hunters is that they constantly invade the privacy of others and put the lives of others at risk. If hunters went to some enclosed area where no one else could hear them (or risk being shot by them) I would view them much more favourably. But they don't. There is nothing personal or private about what they do: they are the most "in your face" people one could ever wish not to meet. As such they deserve nothing but condemnation and that is all they will get from me. You demonstrate the average hunter's attitude every time you post here: aggressive with absolutely no regard for anyone other than themselves.

the connection dies Please be much more specific.

for myself i have to admit it's been an unexpected [and unpleasant] surprise that free banking for those in credit is not apparently widely available in france Actually "free banking" is the law in France. The law also prohibited the payment of interest on current accounts until very recently. The confusion arises over what is "normal" free banking and what is extra. Things like debit cards are optional extras and are charged for by the banks accordingly. They can also charge for things like posting cheque books (LaPoste doesn't), but not for issuing the cheques themselves. I'm not sure quite how the CA get around the recent move to charging for counter service (which in theory should also be free) but they do. A common trick is to give you some package of credit/insurance/bank-card by default without explaining that it is an optional (and chargeable) extra. You can refuse all these packages and their associated charges. For what it's worth I only pay the standing 2€ annual maintenance fee for my LaPoste cheque account.

Personally I have a great problem with the legalities of Sky and this copyright thing, which is said to be the reason why everyone cannot have it. You misunderstand the copyright issue. Sky and the other UK broadcasters on Astra2 hold the satellite broadcasting rights for the UK and the ROI. This prohibits them from knowingly selling their product outside the UK and the ROI, as they do not hold the rights to do so. As a viewer you are subject to no such restriction, nor is there anything anywhere in copyright law that prevents you from viewing. Compare it with a book. You can buy a book at New York airport and read it anywhere in the world. Inside the front cover it will state in which territories the book may be sold and this will probably only include North America. But no one is breaking any law when you export the book personally, least of all you.

Is this forum also the place to discuss Satellite tv ( esp Sky ) when its name,Sky UK means it is for UK use. I see that advice is given quite readily on how to get/use Sky here when in fact it is illegal. You have no comprehension of the subject at all. There is absolutely nothing illegal about receiving UK TV outside the UK, as long as you have the official equipment and are not attempting to pirate the channels with, for example, a homemade viewing card. If you are so sure that receiving UK TV outside the UK is illegal then please state the law that this contravenes: I know you cannot for there is no such law. In fact the EU "TV sans frontieres" directive specifically allows for the cross-border reception of TV. However there are clear French, UK, EU and US laws that severely prohibit the downloading of copyright media. And by the way the word "UK" does not figure anywhere in BSkyB's name and they do sell their product most officially in the Republic of Ireland (which is an independent state and not part of the UK, in case you didn't know).

In theory it costs under 1€ per month, with no charge until July 2005. In practice they offer it for nothing from time to time to existing customers, in return for getting a less frequent statement. I suspect that the entire charge can be permanently negotiated with your chef de bureau. The 1€ charge is very modest but even so the principle annoys me and so I would not pay it. The CA charges more than that, I think, unless you have one of their all-in pay options which of course amounts to the same thing. AFAIK LaPoste is the French bank that charges the least for day-to-day banking (cheque book home delivery, paying-in, withdrawing, cash cards). Debit cards are about the only thing they charge a lot for and even there they charge no more than other banks.

In the last three years that we have lived here there are now blackbirds in the trees along with thrushes and all sorts of other hedgerow birds that were so obviously missing when we moved here. I for one am delighted and it is a pleasure to read for once of a new resident doing something useful. Most of them have no regard for anything other than themselves, like the hunters you describe. When I leave my house I hope that the new owners will continue to feed the wild birds that we have encouraged over the years.

As someone who ....  speaks French (God knows what difference that makes) The article in the link I gave was in French. Some knowledge of French would therefore be an asset in reading it, as I suggested. I repeat. Who the Hell cares. You clearly don't. However, the downloading of copyrighted material is a serious criminal offence. The copyright owners care. The French government, judiciary and law-enforcement care. It is simple and straightforward theft for which there is no defence. It is exactly the same as shoplifting or modifying your electricity meter reading. Would anyone ask here how best to steal CDs from the local record shop or how best to overcharge a pensioner for plumbing work? I doubt it. And would you care if someone took your car from the supermarket carpark? Perhaps you would. Yet they are only doing what illegal downloaders do: taking something that doesn't belong to them. I would also point out the under French law discussions about how best to commit offences are also illegal and can result in a long prison sentence. I expect that you don't care about that either.

I should worry. This link may afford some light entertainment, if you can read French: <http://www.neteconomie.com/perl/navig.pl/neteconomie/infos/article/20050211114040> By the way, as someone who authors legal DVDs complete with menus from time to time, I can tell you that the advice given was incomplete.

OK I see no point taking one PC to a shop. Networks must be examined as a network. If you were local to me I would come and sort it out for you. FT or a local network man will probably be able to sort it out on site. Unless you have a particular reason for using the livebox (free phone calls etc.) I would always prefer a regular ethernet modem. FT do a good one for just 10€. Connect it to the whatever router you currently have and tell the router that it is your connection to the internet. Remove any Windows ICS that you may have installed and put all PCs onto DHCP. That should do it. Reboot everything, router first. You may need to release the IP config on the PC that is causing a problem and you can do this from a DOS prompt using the ipconfig command, depending on your OS. Type ipconfig /? for help. I'm sorry but networks are difficult to advise on from a distance. One never has all the details.

Come on Mazan, are you honestly saying you have never taped a film from the TV? French law fully authorises this. In fact French law (currently) allows for one copy of any CD or DVD to be made as a backup for private use, which is more than most other EU states allow for. However, downloading copyrighted items is decidedly illegal in France and the maximum penalty is high. My personal opinion of the legality or desirability is neither here nor there. I just don't think that this sort of question should be raised here.

I hate to break this to you but all the Emails circlating around Europe and the States are monitered all the time. This is certainly not news. However, there is a huge difference between government bodies scanning emails for certain words and a private company storing all my incoming and outgoing messages regardless of content and using them as it wishes with the my full (but probably unwitting) consent. Even the government doesn't do that, as far as we know. I just forget, because I've better things to do with my time, what the system is called but it picks up on certain key words and stores/moniters that particuler Email. You are thinking of Carnivore and Echelon, amongst others.

Logged onto the internet and found my browser page changed from Wanadoo to AboutBlank (which I gather is notoriously difficult to get rid of). You seem to have that the wrong way around. "about : blank" is merely one of the three home page settings in IE (tools: options: first line down) and couldn't be easier to change. It is also the setting that I always select as it is the only one that doesn't attempt to load some enormous default webpage every time one starts IE. Wanadoo is the thing that is difficult to get rid of and, at the risk of repeating myself for the millionth time, one should not insert the Wanadoo CDRom under any circumstances. It is NEVER needed and its use achieves nothing at all.

Is this forum a suitable place to request or give advice about how to steal copyrighted items? I don't think so.

Gmail is very similar in function to other webmail services as provided by most ISPs, though it offers some extra search facilities and a larger amount of storage. The main difference is in the T&Cs of the Gmail service. Basically by using it you agree to letting Google have full access to, and full use of, all your incoming and outgoing email forever. That includes deleted emails which, it seems, are never completely deleted. I consider this to be totally unacceptable for obvious reasons. In fact I'm astounded that anyone would agree to this unless they just didn't realise what they were agreeing to.

I wouldn't use Gmail if I was paid to do so. I also have grave doubts about both receiving and sending messages from/to Gmail accounts and will probably not do so if (when) the service becomes popular.

 I have a new problem now, when I first came out of O/E or the internet, I got a dialoque box asking if I wanted to stay connected, so I could select to be disconnected and come off the internet however, this has now dissapeared and having lost all the wanadoo stuff on the task bar, the little TV's that flash to show activity, I have no way of knowing if I am connected or not or being able to come off the internet " manually. You can bring back the dialogue box and the TV icon this way: Start from the IE menu: tools: internet options: connections. Select the Wanadoo connection. Click on the "settings" button. The icon option is under "properties" and the dialogue box is under "advanced".

The house we are buying has low level, wet, under floor heating, but just on LPG. Before taking over the LPG contract you might want to investigate the possibility of ripping out the gas boiler and installing an oil boiler and tank. LPG can be very expensive and once you've signed you're locked in for years.

If I were renovating or building again there is no question that I would go for low temperature wet underfloor heating powered by geothermal with oil backup. To which I would add a solar unit for hot water production. And probably a reversible air-conditioner, depending on the location of the house. Underfloor heating is so much better than radiators that I can't imagine why it isn't standard in every decent new house. Whatever the current insulation spec is when you build: double it.

Glad you got to the bottom of this. I've not come across that particular problem before. I don't think you mentioned how many files there actually were? This isn't normally an issue unless there really are a lot of them. Did you have a great number? This issue is in fact tied up with the possible illegal character/file name problem that I mentioned and very long file names can also cause this to happen. Having many levels of folders and sub-folders can also do it. It's all to do with the file allocation table (FAT). The suggestion to put the files into more folders would probably do the trick also.