"... keeping the BBC free from political influence"

Or accountability. Seriously it would be easier on my conscience if the BBC were a government department. Because being forced to pay for something you can't control which rubs its own political ideology in your face every day ...... sucks.

"They import it from France, and don't bother converting it."

Nope. The undersea cable carries DC. It is converted at both ends.

I can tell the difference between MP3 and FLAC while driving my car with the bog standard stereo. Once it's been pointed out to you, it soon becomes really annoying.

You don't even need ears to notice the difference. Just look at the spectrum. MP3's top end (13kHz up) flops about all over the place. And whaddya know? One sure sign is truncated reverb tails. But it can be difficult to put this into words. People might say there is less air or less space or depth. Bottom line it's measurable.

Anyone doing any kind of pro audio would be able to tell the difference. So take your gold plated straw man and burn him somewhere else, thank-you.

In the UK, you'll need a TV license (£145 per year) if you don't already have one - completely dwarfing the tuner purchase cost.

It is well known the BBC want to extend TV licensing to "watch again" (not quite the same as on-demand) services like iPlayer, 4OD etc. The argument goes that a PVR needs a license but a PC does not, and that this is an anomaly. I can easily see ISPs being used as middle-men to collect the fee.

The French are well known for being overly precious and up themselves when it comes to accepting criticism. Especially when it comes to food. Hence the CAP, which is designed to tax other nations to preserve frenchness.

Not Europe in general, just anywhere Napoleon conquered.

Don't buy a card. Period. Get a decent USB I/O. That way you can use it anywhere and it doesn't have to be buried with your dead desktop.

Don't get me wrong, internal sound is actually not bad these days, but you never really know what you're getting and you might need to hack about with grounding for acceptable performance. (My current desktop is OK on output but terrible on input, even with hacks.) If you need something dependable, buy an external lump with known quality. I have a Roland Quad Capture I'm happy with.

We don't give a rat's arse about stuff that happened 200 years ago or whatever. We leave all that stuff to your good selves. Most people don't even care if Scotland leave The Union. That's how it is.

We do care that Islamic Extremism is surging here in the UK. This is something the US you doesn't have to deal with 24/7, happily for them.

The problem with quoting The Guardian is that those guys don't actually care if Britain becomes Muslim. Some of them, eg George Galloway MP and former Mayor Ken Livingstone seem happy to get in line to further their own careers and damn what the rest of us want. Galloway even converted to Islam. And Islam suits "Red" Ken's chronic anti-semitism, as it does much of The Left.

I understand if you're ignorant about Islam's MO for taking over society, but kindly STFU until you've done some research. You want to see what we're up against? Google "UK School Trojan Horse Plot".

It is likely Sparkfun or some other Western importer supplied a Fluke DMM as a sample and said "we want something like this". Now, China being China, they do tend to focus on the cosmetics. They are excellent copiers. In this case, too good. Sparkfun might be telling the truth about their ignorance of the trademark, but certainly not of the original article.

Out of interest I DLed some of these "high resolution" products, then analyzed them in Adobe Audition. Some were indeed from the analog master, I could tell by the extended top end going to ~30kHz. So perhaps there is some justification going to 96 (not losing anything), but not 192. These also had a noise floor around -70dB, making a mockery of 24 bits. Others turned out to be nothing more than the 44.1 digital master resampled to 24/192.

Clearly they're asking US & UK (both nuclear powers) for help.

Given the recent history of Ukraine and also of Russia, this is not unexpected.

And if you've been paying attention *at all*, it's entirely expected.

... I'm afraid. Only certain personal traits (such as good looks and charisma - no pun intended) are socially celebrated, while science and engineering talent are quite frankly milked and abused.

The UK turned its back on science and engineering back in the 1950s and embraced the arts (nothing wrong with that) and the cult of management instead. That tide has not turned; if anything it is getting worse.

When I joined the IEE (now IET) back in 1990 there was an assumption that everyone with an engineering degree would be in management by age 30. That's only 10 years (and not the best years) of engineering usefulness.

Now I see India making the exact same mistakes. We have to deal with 22 year old rookies who don't have the experience (I work in firmware with a strong analog emphasis) to deliver production code.

And some people wonder why we don't just hand over the Falklands.