On no less than 3 separate occasions, I have managed to freak out the HR departments of companies I was joining because I actually reading the contracts. It appears that most people are just willing to sign their lives away. The most recent example was where the company holiday year was January-December. I joined at the start of July and so was entitled to half the years holiday allowance (thats the way it works in the UK). My contract said that I wasnt allowed ot take any vaction in the first 6 months of employment, but that all vacation had to be taken by the end of the holiday year - no carry over and no recompence for untaken leave. So I was entitled to 12 days leave but was not allowed to take it and would get no recompence for the loss. When I pointed this out, HR said that it wasn't enforced, but refused to remove it from the contract. A lot of HR departments just use previously approved legal boilerplate text without thinking through the implications and have no idea what to do when someone calls them on an anomily.

Its all some people know. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail

I've been playing around with http://roll20.net/ which is a tool for online gaming (I'm not affiliated in any way). Whilst it is aimed primarily at run web based rpg games, the framework allows you to create maps - including hex based ones. It has the ability to work with video chat, a built in dice rolling system and ways to communicate in secret between players. It also has a deck of cards mechanism which can be tailored to other card decks. So with a little effort, you can build a library of boardgames, card games or RPGs which will give some variety. You can also invite in others to play if you take the fancy. Basic membership is free but they also have a subscriber model with additionaal features

You dont want a pitchfork, you want a spoon! If it was good enough for the Sherif of Nottingham, its good enough for me.

We should be culling politicians and not badgers.

Nothing beats going into an election with a successful war behind you.

The Argentinian government is going to need something to distract the populous - time for the Falklanders to start digging bomb shelters.

Congratulations, you are offended by my views on religion

Just to clarify, I in no way intended to make that comment directly to Mr. Anonymous Coward, 'you' was intended to be a random religion. It was a poor choice of words on my part. Obviously, I have not had a chance to offend Mr. Coward (yet) as I have not explained my views to him.

I further apologise for assuming that Mr. Coward is, in fact, a Mr.

You cannot place this on any one religion. Blasphemy laws exist in many countries to protect the dominant position of religion in society. Even in the UK, where the Blasphemy laws were abolished, you can still be taken to court for 'offending' someone. Congratulations, you are offended by my views on religion. I find your desire to push religiously motivated policies onto those who do not share your faith or beliefs to be offensive, but apparently that doesn't count.

There is a fine line between 'hard' and 'masochistic'

We have had one minor dose of common sense this week with the revised social media legal guidelines. It was far to much to hope that it would continue

Two major changes have been the increase in speed and breadth of information access. We simply know about more crime, from a wider area, than we ever have before. When all you knew about was your local community, crime would often be seen as very rare. It wasn't long ago that millions could die in war or famine that most of the rest of the world knew nothing about. Now, a single death can be global news in seconds. So, just because some bad stuff happened somewhere is not necessarily proof that the world has gone to hell in a hand basket. Reducing the sensationalist elements of death, crime and war might be an idea, but has its drawbacks. Education - to understand what you are being told - is probably the key but who knows if that would ever be possible. The second major change has been the increase in the capability to kill large numbers of people in a short space of time. A lot of this is the by-product of technological development. You will never control it all, but you can make items difficult to access. Its that, or we all go back to living in the trees.

So non-religious people dont perform moral acts? Utter rubbish.

and some people who attend places of relious worship are taught hate, bigotry and intollerance. Your basic assumption that religious people=good, non religous people=bad is utterly flawed.

Planet? Pah! I demand a Ring World!

I bounce between Windows, Ubuntu and OSX reasonably regularly and am quite able to work with Unity without any problem. I know it does have its detractors, but it is all pretty simple and straight forward to use without getting too many things in the way to confuse a poor Windows user