Category: observations

So Josh in comments mentioned that the UK’s TV license covers everything that can receive over the air broadcasting.

British TV license could be replaced with PC tax:

Prompted by concerns that TV ownership will drop as PC owners begin tuning in on their computers, the UK is considering an annual tax on PCs similar to the country’s TV licenses. Currently, residents of the UK pay £116.00 a year for a color TV license and £38.50 for a black-and-white TV. The money raised through the licensing program is used to fund the operations of the government-owned BBC (and keep the two BBC networks commercial-free).

It looks like it’s still in the planning stages. Interesting how if this was a business, they would likely be praised for being alert to new opportunities but since it’s the tax man, it’s bloody-minded intrusion.
And what to make of this argument?

BBC TV License – Why the British Should Kill Their Televisions:

In the United Kingdom, citizens must pay a licence if they own a television set. That’s right, a TV tax. For Americans, the whole idea of an annual tax to own a television borders on the absurd. However, in the UK, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a government agency that has the power to tax and enforce laws. In order to obtain funding, the BBC requires that anyone using its services must pay for them. So, if you own a TV set and live in the UK, you could conceivably turn on the BBC broadcasts, so therefore you better pay.

He goes from “kill your television” to “stick it to the [taxpayer-funded] man.” The article makes clear that with a few exceptions — an uninhabited-since-the-12th-century castle is a waste of effort — but it’s by no means a blanket tax: TV owners and users are the target. And the point of the license is to ensure that TV programming is commercial-free, ie developed without regard for advertising sales. That seems hard to argue with: it’s the endless marketing of crap that I object to.

We all like to complain about taxes, it’s true. But should we balk at paying for services we know we use, just because they’re provided by a public entity?

There’s probably a name for this. And everyone else probably knows about it.:

So I’m sitting there inside /usr/local/src. There’s a subdirectory called sox-12.17.7. I want to move into that subdirectory. Apparently — and I only found this today for the first time — I can simply type cd sox and then press the TAB key, and the OS automagically inserts the rest for me.

It’s not the OS, but the (command) shell program: they don’t all do it, but the better ones (like bash, which I assume he’s using) do.

Now he’ll be wondering how many keystrokes he has typed unnecessarily 😉

iBook G4 Field Report, Drive Replacement, 1 GB Upgrade; Temperature Monitor; New iPod Case; and More:

The question is answered. The new iBook G4s will support 1 GB of
RAM.

Trans Intl. has announced the availability of a 1 GB DDR memory
upgrade module for the newly released iBook G4 800 MHz, 933 MHz, 1
GHz Model.

The iBook G4 models have one available memory expansion slot for
main memory expansion and 128 MB of RAM soldered on the system logic
board. Trans Intl’s 1 GB memory modules brings the system’s main
memory in the iBook G4 models to 1152 MB of RAM.

Without this upgrade, the system memory capacity was limited to a
total of 640 MB of memory as currently specified in Apple
documentation.

Trans Intl. memory modules conform to Apple’s stringent electrical
and mechanical design guide lines. Trans Intl 1 GB DDR Memory
Modules operate at a clock rate of 133 MHz and transmits data at 266
Mbps.

I was looking into larger drives — 30 Gb doesn’t cut it — and ran across this little tidbit.

Now playing: Something In The Way by Nirvana from the album “Nevermind” | Get it

MacDevCenter.com: 20 Cool Tiger Features You Might Not Have Heard About:

Here are a few Dashboard tricks that haven’t been talked about much.

• Want to move a widget to the main window layer? Of course you do. Here’s how: go to Terminal and type the command defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES. Still in Terminal, type killall Dock to restart Dashboard (and the Dock). Activate Dashboard (by default, you do that by pressing F12). Find the widget you want to put on the main layer and drag it a bit, but don’t let go of the mouse button. While you’re still holding the mouse button down, press the Dashboard keystroke again and release it, then release the mouse button. Your widget should now be floating above the Desktop and windows.
• Dashboard is filled with semi-hidden eye candy. Click a widget and type Command-R to watch it reload. See visual effects, such as dragging out a new widget or closing one, in slow motion by holding down the Shift key (an old OS X trick).
• If you would rather not have the ubiquitous Dashboard icon in the Dock, you can get rid of it easily. Just drag the icon out of the Dock and drop it to make it go poof.

Driving around today — either coming home from taking my kids to school or from taking some folks to the hospital — I heard some DJ hype something with a lot of cowbell.

Turns out I had the misfortune of hearing something unmemorable by Queens of the Stone Age (underwhelming) and learning that the DJ doesn’t know a cowbell from a wood block.

If you’re to riff on a topical joke, get it right.

Chad Dickerson: CTO Connection:

(I’m sure someone is going to write to me and say, “Just do this, you dummy,” but really, should ejecting a CD require any voodoo whatsoever?)

Well, I didn’t call him a dummy, but it looks like what I suggested worked.

The Real Threat To Yahoo Music Store (Hint: Not iTunes)

Broadband Reports refers to file sharing as the pink elephant in the room, wisely noting that Yahoo’s entry will make little difference in file sharing habits. More to the point, the Yahoo service doesn’t address the main problem with online music ventures: it’s a flawed and failing business model. It doesn’t give people what they really want, i.e., flexible access to lots and lots of music. People will always find a way to do that, as they have for many years, typically through some sort of sharing. As Mike Langberg points out, the online stores are losing out to P2P sharing because, despite offering over a million songs, the stores offer only a small fraction of all the music they could sell — nearly all of which is available on file sharing systems. The converse of this thought is that the labels can reduce file sharing by making many more songs available online than there are today.

Yup, we knew that.

after some fits and starts, I am now enjoying Tiger. I like what I see so far. I concur on what others have said about some interface inconsistencies, but by and large, it’s a noticeable upgrade: seamless but obvious, if that makes sense. It extends what was there without seeming too different.

It does seem faster (and on an 800 MHz iBook, that’s a real benefit). I think Spotlight is amazing: I have had occasion to use it a couple of times and it’s everything I heard it would be. I can only imagine it on a G5.

The “pre-order” discount is on til the end of May, I think, so it you haven’t taken the plunge, why wait?

And an added bonus, new versions of NetNewsWire, ecto, and the 1.0 release of DarwinPorts all came out this week.

My eldest cat disappeared this afternoon. 18 years old, deaf, arthritic, and devoid of any street smarts. The prognosis is not good. He’s an indoor cat — always has been — and it’s plenty cold tonight for a guy in his state of decrepitude.

I have a flyer ready to distribute to the neighbors tomorrow, assuming he doesn’t stroll up before then.

Well, the iBook/Tiger grudge match continues. I am backing up the whole disk and preparing to erase the disk and start afresh.

hdiutil create -srcfolder /Volumes/white /volumes/backup/white.dmg

Adding in the destructive upgrade to my drupal site, we’ve had a lovely day of technical difficulties.

<update> well, my planned use of hdiutil didn’t work out. Let’s see if rsync can manage it.