OT : TV licensing - must I compy?

[Rick Dipper]

You have to have a licence if you have equipment capable of receiving a signal. I argued sucessfully, that I don't have this. I do have a TV, and Video, and a Massive Video collection, but the TV in the house is not capable of receiving a signal, as one does not reach the house.

We don't get radio inside either, the walls are simply too thick, and the signal too week.

I phoned up the TV people and told them this, they agreed I was right, the bad letters stopped. Just for good measure they sent the detector van down to my place, got the damm thing stuck, and let all the sheep out on the road. The farmer was pissed off big time. I don't think I will ever see them again.

I am in N Wales, just oustide the National Park.

Rick

[Andy Dingley]

Not for a month or two - but I imagine this will inevitably happen soon.

A SAK is _not_ on the prohibited list, although most police are ignorant of the law. And of course you can be arrested for anything, if the officer wants to.

My own pocket knife is a Spyderco Delicia, which _is_ illegal, because it's fitted with a folding lock. The same knife without the lock would not be safe to use, so I carry it to save the risk to my fingers. Perhaps I can have this offence taken into consideration when I'm sent down for refusing the compulsory finger-printing for ID cards.

Two interesting posts that Scott Leckey made to rec.knives Message-ID: Message-ID:

[Owain]

"Andy Dingley" wrote | .. The guy's eyes _lit_up_ at the sight of this, as he'd | clearly found the sneaky TV. So he flung the doors open, | at which point several hundred CDs cascaded all over his feet. | I tried my best Jean Brodie voice and said "I do hope you're | going to pick those up" To be fair, he did. Buggers still | kept sending the letters though.

If you'd kept some old paint tins in that cupboard you could have got a new carpet out of the experience.

Owain

[Huge]

[37 lines snipped]

Given that both these statements are untrue, I would suggest to other readers to ignore "The Natural Philosopher" on this matter.

[Stefek Zaba]

AARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

"Literacy hour" remedial reading skills training needed.

FFS, the statute is pretty damn clear what you need a licence for. You need a licence to

u s e

equipment to receive, etc. Mere possession, *without* use, - and without licence - is N O T the offence.

The business about keeping it detuned, away from aerial sockets (if present), gumming up the RF input, etc etc etc are all to help rebut a presumption of 'use'. Such a presumption might not strike many of us as fair or reasonable: but the overwhelming majority of the population are watchers of broadcast TV, and some substantial proportion of those with TVs and no licence are indeed using them to receive broadcasts. Hence the elaborate, disproportionate, steps to which it turns out in practice to be worth going to get the suspicious, can't-imagine-life-without-a-teli morons who account for the bulk of the TV Licensing organisation's workforce off one's back.

Though I do like Andy Dingley's idea of posing as a tin-foil nutter - along with a little harmless sodium bicarb + tartaric acid in the mouth to help with the foaming bit ;-)

Stefek

[Grunff]

You won't be the only one refusing. Retinal scan anyone?

[Andy Hall]

I had a friend at university who had this down to a tee.

His party piece was with Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and the like, who while we were there became persistently annoying.

This individual could throw up pretty much to order and his party piece would be to be poised when they came to the door at the appointed hour, whereupon he would run down the stairs to the front door screaming that he was the Antichrist and would puke ceremonially at their feet.

It worked a treat for any of these persistent and unwanted callers.

[BigWallop]

ROFL !!! Nice trick if you can do it.

Another good one is to touch any literature they hand to you, then pretend it has burned your hand. Works especially well if the literature has a crucifix or some such on it.

[Stefek Zaba]

They're unlikely to to the retinal thing. Iris is the one biometric which comes close to meeting HomeOfficious fantasy requirements (genuinely highly probable to be unique across a population the size of the UK, with distance-from-one-measurement-to-another within the same eye being hugely, statistically-reliably, smaller than distance-from-one-measured-eye-to-another (including both eyes of one person).

Now, linking that fact to other "facts" about the individual; shelling out for the expense of iris readers at all the places aspects of the ID card proposals handwave they'll be; expecting you'll be able to 'eventually' have *everyone* registered - not just the stable-address, engaged-in-society people, but those living rough, or deliberately avoiding contact with the authorities - those are some of the places the fantasy starts to move rapidly and orthogonally away from the reality the rest of us inhabit.

[Ian Stirling]

It's also possible (with a big camera admittedly) to do this from quite some distance. However, technology that would let a policeman carry a little thing that would identify anyone within a couple of meters is quite possible. Obvious countermeasures are dark glasses, and patterned contact lenses. (It's hard to fake well, as the iris should respond to light and have a pulse)

[raden]

In message , Kalico writes

FFS - just ignore them or tell them to f*ck off

... together with a happy xmas message

[Huge]

Perhaps we need to refuse "en mass", 'cos I'm not carrying one.

See you in the 'Scrubs?

[John Rumm]

I can well see a good number of people are going to enjoy thinking of all sorts of creative ways of bollxing the system... The irony is that by the time EDS (or one of the other usual susspects) have finished developing it, there probably won't be much chance of it identifing a fart in a sleeping bag!

As an aside, I find it interesting how many people fall for the "it won't be compulsary to carry one" argument....

The "ID Card" will be no such thing - there will be the same multitude of IDs that we currently have, only over time these will acquire linkage to the ID database.

There will probably also be a genuine ID card as well with no other pupose than being an ID card (i.e. what most people think and ID card will be), but if you carry any of these or not will be a moot point. The linkage to the database is *you* and not the cards. You can be linked to your database record (of some 51 key facts!) by using the biometric at any time (unless you plan to leave you face, eyes, and fingers at home).

[Stefek Zaba]

Yeah - according to John Daugman, inventor and holder of the core patent which makes this work (and one of those rare cases where a patent is used to general advantage, in that he seems quite fierce about getting licensees to implement it right and f'r example includes a "size-of-population-being-matched-against" parameter into the algorithm, to keep the likelihood of a false match low as pop. size increases), the largest distance it's practical for is about 20m, with pretty exotic optics. As you say, a 2m "semi-covert" scan is possible; and anything covert or semi-covert is easier to counter than a live scan with a real person supervising it...

[Stefek Zaba]

Plenty of info and organising over at

...

[Nick Atty]

Super idea. Does that mean that if I only watch BBC then Tesco and the like will charge me less for my shopping?

[Andy Hall]

On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 19:26:15 +0000, John Rumm wrote:

It'll be Arthur Andersen, since they had so much recent success on this project:

"Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experiences to align the chicken?s people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Anderson consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes. The meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an impact environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken?s mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution. (Andersen Consulting helped the chicken change to become more successful."

[raden]

Politicians (capable of lying) banned from the houses of parliament

[Lurch]

On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 21:47:09 -0000, ":::Jerry::::" strung together this:

I haven't managed to read all posts thoroughly but the TV gestapo send you letters if you buy a TV, not if you have one in the house. So, if you buy a TV you have to fill out your details on a form, then they st6art sending you letters to apply for a TV licence.

[raden]

In message , Ziggy writes

Because, as someone said before, you are paying for the "privilege" of using the receiver, not for the channel you are watching.