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Living Room / Re: Why does keep changing the bar menu order/visibility??
« Last post by KynloStephen66515 on December 16, 2012, 08:09 PM »"Why does keep changing the bar menu order/visibility??" <--- I think you forgot a word?
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We started the design in June, and last week I got my first prototype motherboards, hot off the SMT line. It’s booting linux, and I’m currently grinding through the validation of all the sub-components. I thought I’d share the design progress with my readers.
Of course, a feature of a build-it-yourself laptop is that all the design documentation is open, so others of sufficient skill and resources can also build it. The hardware and its sub-components are picked so as to make this the most practically open hardware laptop I could create using state of the art technology. You can download, without NDA, the datasheets for all the components, and key peripheral options are available so it’s possible to build a complete firmware from source with no opaque blobs.
I have mixed feelings -and thoughts- there.
The reality very probably is, that the radio stations I do often enjoy listening to, would not exist if there were no license. As said above, I'm out of touch with TV, so I cant comment about that.
If the license wasn't there, we would only have advertising supported stations. Reminiscent of the internet craze for 'free' resulting in lots of ad-supported apps - and adware.-tomos (December 16, 2012, 11:39 AM)
One good thing about ad based tv & radio stations, you don't have to pay for the crap you don't want to watch or listen to. If the station wants to be profitable they have to compete for good entertainment which brings in advertizers to pay for it all.-Tinman57 (December 16, 2012, 04:10 PM)
That's exactly what I see as not necessarily good.
The result?
Generic crap with tons of advertising. Lowest common denominator entertainment. I'm not saying your money should pay for what I listen to - but I am complaining about the alternative.
Last time I saw Amercian TV was scary - and that was years ago - I cant see it having gotten any better since.-tomos (December 16, 2012, 04:19 PM)
thanx Im sure i can do a christmas cody and a evil cody-Hally (December 15, 2012, 05:46 PM)
Evil Cody could be interpreted so many different ways. Could be demonic. Could be evil doctor/scientist. Could be just creepy/scary looking. . .
Oh, and may I humbly request/suggest Hally make a Cody image for our NANY 2013 mugs?
-Deozaan (December 15, 2012, 06:12 PM)
Would need some awesome person to make it into a high-quality image for print xD-Stephen66515 (December 15, 2012, 06:14 PM)
Shush! I just asked an awesome person (Hally) to make the image.-Deozaan (December 15, 2012, 06:40 PM)
thanx Im sure i can do a christmas cody and a evil cody-Hally (December 15, 2012, 05:46 PM)
Evil Cody could be interpreted so many different ways. Could be demonic. Could be evil doctor/scientist. Could be just creepy/scary looking. . .
Oh, and may I humbly request/suggest Hally make a Cody image for our NANY 2013 mugs?-Deozaan (December 15, 2012, 06:12 PM)
that was fun
especially liked this image (hadnt seen -or had forgotten- it)
(see attachment in previous post)
btw what's the smoothie music?-tomos (December 14, 2012, 04:11 AM)
she hijacked my DC account to reply...Stephen, you could create Hally her own account on DC, so everybody knows when she's replying-Stephen66515 (December 14, 2012, 05:02 PM)-Ath (December 15, 2012, 04:47 AM)
I was really confused because when I first saw the title of this thread, my brain thought it was about Apple. Then I realized that it made no sense for Apple to lose weight. So my brain decided this thread was going to be about app103 and I was wondering why you'd be making a post about her losing weight.
I think I need a new brain.-Deozaan (December 15, 2012, 01:24 PM)
Any time you need to put a gun to someone's head in order for them to accept you "brilliant idea", that's probably an indication that your idea isn't all that great. But this is the exact violence that is inherent in the twisted brand of radical socialism we have today.-Renegade (December 14, 2012, 08:40 PM)
It actually applies to more than just UK residents - anyone who buys anything in the UK capable of receiving a TV signal is expected to either have a TV license or currently staying somewhere that does.
I was going to be refused the purchase of a USB DVB-T tuner from Maplins unless I specified an address they could look up to see if it had a valid license.-4wd (December 14, 2012, 08:28 PM)
Personally, I always thought the TV license in GB was crap and stepped on the rights of the citizens. I don't know of any other country that does this, but there may be. Either way, I think it's a tax on information sent over the airwaves and should be illegal. I don't know who the genius was that came up with this idea, but he/she/they should be horsewhipped, tarred and feathered.
Good luck with going against the government, your going to need it.....-Tinman57 (December 14, 2012, 07:46 PM)
...householders who are caught watching television illegally are being warned they risk a £1,000 fine.-http://www.burnleycitizen.co.uk/news/2016189.bad_reception_for_tv_licence_cheats/
The high number of licence fee dodgers caught in Blackburn is evidence of TV Licensing's success in enforcing the licence fee on behalf of the honest majority who pay-http://www.burnleycitizen.co.uk/news/2016189.bad_reception_for_tv_licence_cheats/
On average, about 1,000 TV licence fee evaders are caught every day across the country.-http://www.burnleycitizen.co.uk/news/2016189.bad_reception_for_tv_licence_cheats/
Official Warning - This Property Is Unlicensed
You are hereby notified that we have authorised officers from our Enforcement Division to visit your home and interview you under caution, as our records show there is still no TV License at this address and as yet we have received no response to previous communications from you.
Your statement will be taken in compliance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984*, and is the first step in our action to prosecute if we find evidence that you watch or record television without a valid license.
I feel it is my duty to inform you that if found guilty, you could receive a maximum fine of £1000, and your name will be added to our National Enforcement Database. We take this offense very seriously and last month alone we caught 21,718 people.
To avoid an appearance in court before a magistrate I would strongly advise you to call 0870 241 7204 or buy a TV License online at www.tvlicensing.co.uk.
Yours faithfully,
John Robinson
Regional Enforcement Manager
Please see reverse for important TV Licensing Information, including exclusions and how to pay. A TV License currently costs £131.50 for colour and £44 for black and white.
* In Scotland, interviews and cautions are made in line with Scottish criminal law.
. . . If you buy your TV License now, you don't need to call us.
The BBC is funded by TV License fees paid by anyone in the UK who watches television. They don't have to watch the BBC but have to pay this license fee in any case. Although it is called a "fee", since you have to pay it regardless of whether you receive the service, it is actually a tax and was recently officially acknowledged as a tax.
So, my initial gripe is that by calling it a "fee", they are misrepresenting something that is a tax. But it doesn't end there by a long shot.
You see, since the BBC doesn't want to have its lovely image tarnished, it set up a separate entity called TV Licensing to deal with gathering this tax. The correspondence and advertising that TV Licensing spews out does not contain any references to the BBC but their website makes the relationship clear. So, let's understand that TV Licensing is the BBC and in the rest of this post, I will simply refer to the BBC.
If you live in London (and other parts of the UK, I'm sure), you have no doubt seen the threatening advertising that the BBC adorns billboards and Underground walls with. (One ad reads: "We have a list of every unlicensed address in Britain. Don't believe us? Fine.")
Understand what this is: It is the BBC subjecting a mass of the citizenry -- the very public that pays for it on a daily basis -- to a nasty campaign of fear, intimidation and threats.
Why should I have to read this crap on my way to work or when heading out for a movie? What right do these people have to threaten us on a daily basis? If you were to go out and threaten a single person, it's more than likely that they would complain to the police. What about threatening a carriage full of people or a whole train of people with ads? How is this even allowed?
The BBC puts out these nasty, threatening ads under the name of TV Licensing because it doesn't want its own image to be identified with them. Well I hope that that's going to get increasingly more difficult in our so-called information age and I will sure as hell do whatever I can to make sure that people connect the dots.
So in my title I asked whether the BBC employs extortion. That would be a very strong accusation to make, considering that extortion is illegal. It is my belief that the letter I was sent, reproduced above, is all the evidence you need to see that the BBC, under the name of TV Licensing, are engaging in extortion. The letter states that in order "[t]o avoid an appearance in court before a magistrate" I must either call an 0870 number or buy a TV License.
Let's review the definition of extortion for a moment:
Extortion (n): the practice of obtaining something, esp. money, through force or threats - New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition
The BBC's letter threatens me that either I buy a TV License (pay them money) or I call a premium rate number (pay them money) to inform them that I don't have to buy a license or that I will risk "an appearance in court before a magistrate".
Either way, using a threat, the BBC gets money: either from the TV License or from their cut of the premium-rate 0870 number (According to a BBC spokesman: "the national rate numbers help TV Licensing to keep the costs of collection down and maximise licence fee revenue".)
What was the definition of extortion, again?
So what about my situation? Am I basking in the glimmering glory of the BBC every night, or watching some other TV channels and robbing this poor institution of a license fee? No. I haven't received a television signal in my home since I arrived in this country. I have two TV sets. One's a small one that I used to use a long time ago while editing video (it sits, unplugged, in the store room) and the other is a new 46" baby that I use solely for my Wii and XBox 360. If I ever get Sky HD, I'll be forced to pay the TV Tax (and I will) but until that day, it feels like the the BBC are wrongfully harassing me and trying to extort me for money (and, I can only assume, many others also).
There is an online petition to the Prime Minister to stop TV Licensing (the BBC) from harassing people who have no television (or who don't receive television signals on the TV sets) that I would strongly urge you to sign.
The worst thing is, these horrible tactics by the BBC are playing right into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his media empire who would love nothing more than to see the BBC abolished. Well, let me tell you something, as much as I hate Murdoch, at least his media outlets do not outright threaten me and try to extort money from me (OK, they do their own brand of damage, some of it possibly far worse, but that's another story.)
To the BBC: Stop harassing and threatening the British public. If you're so proud of your despicable tactics, at least own up to them and issue your threats under your own brand instead of hiding behind the TV Licensing name. I, for one, am sick and tired of being seen as guilty until proven innocent and I am fed up with your constant abuse.
Surely this tactic employed by the BBC cannot be legal and allowed to continue?
They now earn money from BBC America, the shares it has in commercial channels (UK Gold, Dave etc), all the DVDs and CDs it sells, books, games, magazines and selling programs like Top Gear and Dr Who all around the world.(They also have advertisements on their UK website, if you view it from a foreign IP, or in my case, a proxy with AdBlock disabled)
I think the Robo Cody is the best of the three. Would your fiancé mind if I tried to convert it to a more computer-friendly version and posted it here? Not that there is anything bad about a scanned paper, but I am a perfectionistsand it looks like a fun thing to do.
-vlastimil (December 14, 2012, 09:59 AM)
<GrammarNazi>
Fianceé
</GrammarNazi>
-Stephen66515 (December 14, 2012, 04:35 PM)
that sounds like Stephen talking-tomos (December 14, 2012, 04:57 PM)
I think the Robo Cody is the best of the three. Would your fiancé mind if I tried to convert it to a more computer-friendly version and posted it here? Not that there is anything bad about a scanned paper, but I am a perfectionists-vlastimil (December 14, 2012, 09:59 AM)
an by all means have a crack a it i took the picture of it on my phone This seems an appropriate place for my first post. To give the basics as suggested elsewhere. . . professional, live in Arizona, not very computer savvy, write for a living, like free stuff but recognize that someone else spent money to make it. I searched for months off and on for a suitable and uncomplicated project timer to use for work, finally went through many posts at sites like portablefreeware, and ended up here. My thought was to post a request but decided to try the forum's search function, which led me off-site to a couple different timers I'm trying now, one of which looks promising. But I donated anyway because I believe in what is going on here. And the forums are a good read so I keep coming back.-Joe Hone (December 13, 2012, 08:02 PM)
