Dan Price’s blog
Weblog of a cyber-geek

Windows XP may be a 7 year old operating system but it is still widely used, and often preferred, to Windows Vista. However, Microsoft have still decided that they will cease all sales of the OS (Operating System) on June 30th and officially stop support sometime after this date.

While it is inevitable that Windows users will have to upgrade sooner or later, XP has been on the whole a user friendly, compatible OS that has remained incredibly versatile for it’s age. In my opinion, Microsoft should continue to sell Windows XP for users that prefer it, but put emphasis on selling Windows Vista and preloading most systems with it, just as it is doing at the moment.

If you agree, then sign the Save XP petition at InfoWorld!

If you live in the UK, then it’s hard to miss the controversy that the Archbishop of Canterbury has caused by what he said on BBC Radio a couple of days away. For the uninformed, the Archbishop said that he thought it was “unavoidable” that some aspects of Sharia (Islamic) law were adopted here in the UK to “retain social cohesion”. Of course, just about all parties in parliament have jumped on the bandwagon, distancing themselves from his comments with some even calling for him to resign.

As per usual, the BNP (British National Party), a bunch of racist scum, are having a field day purposely misinterpreting and broadcasting his remarks simple to gain further support for their Neo-Nazi policies.

Sharia law is a practical code of ethics/law that some Islamic countries use to live out Islam in their daily life. On the whole, it gets bad press because it doesn’t treat women as equal to men and it even supports public executions and whippings. (more…)

This problem caused me a lot of pain and some headaches - how could I create a footer on a page that spanned the whole page from one side of the browser to the other? Most modern sites have 100% width footers with different backgrounds to the main body. Of course, with different page sizes, you can’t specify the background to the body tag as you would with the normal site background. Furthermore, if you place the footer inside the container/wrapper div, then it won’t span across 100% of browser

The solution is actually very simple.

Rather than having a single div for the footer, create 2 divs for the footer - one as div that will span the full 100% of the screen, the other similar to the container/wrapper of your main content that adjusts the same as your existing container and is centred. To the outer div (that spans all of the screen), apply the following CSS:

left: 0; // Zeros the div so that it goes from one side of the browser to the other
background: *Insert colour of choice*;

To the other div that you want to move at the same rate as your existing container/wrapper, simply add it as another selector along with the existing container - example:

Existing CSS:
#container {margin: 0 auto;
width: 800px;
overflow: auto;}
New CSS:
#container, footercontainer {margin: 0 auto;
width: 800px;
overflow: auto;}

I hope this helps anyone who had a similar problem to me - I told you the answer was simple in the end (even if I didn’t explain it that well!)

Well it’s something I definitely missed, but Amazon has announced that it’s DRM-free music store is going global this year. This is of course fantastic news for regular computer users like you and I!

Amazon has got a number of major labels involved including EMI, which is likely going to cause a massive headache for the likes of iTunes, Napster, Yahoo Music and other download services that rely on DRM (Digital Rights Management) to theoretically stop users from sharing music illegally. DRM however is widely criticised because it also stops the user from moving music between his own devices - i.e. from one computer to another, or between different MP3 players and computers.

Is this an end to DRM entirely? We’ll have to wait and see

Firstly, I KNOW I’ll get some stick for this. John Lennon has plenty of fans, particularly for one of his best known works, “Imagine”.

I must admit that I’m a fan of the Beatles - I love their music and I think they were generally good guys. However, I just listened to John Lennon’s Imagine on YouTube and then looked up the lyrics to double check.

I’ve got to say I’m appalled by the song. Not because it’s anti-establishmentist, something that I’m not overly bothered about, but because it’s against religion. I’m not a fan of “religion” really - the word itself conjures up pictures of fanatics, priests performing meaningless ceremonies and profiteering. However, I do believe strongly that people should be allowed to believe what they want as long as they are given options - for example, being informed of other faiths as well as their own or their parents.

“Imagine” is strongly against religion entirely:

“Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky”

…”Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too”

The rest of the song, fine I’ll tolerate, but not this. John Lennon appeared to be such a liberal, yet at the same time believed that religion/faith should be removed. Isn’t that a contradiction? Surely its up to a person to look deep into their heart and make their own decision about faith and God - not have some anarchic atheist mob forcibly making people believe what they wish. Brainwashing with religion is as bad as brainwashing with atheism - by default people are generally agnostics when they are born and then are pushed one way or the other by the society they believe in.

John Lennon called himself liberal and peace-loving yet any act to remove religion or force people to believe atheism would be entirely against peace. To me, John Lennon seems to have been a hypocrite.

I await criticism on this, because I know I’ll receive it…