Oh horse crap. If someone is capable of hooking up a basic led and resistor, and capable of churning out C++ and setting up the Arduino IDE then it is absolutely trivial for them to hook up 6 wires to a breadboard and run a command on their computer to flash a microcontroller. Just how dumb do you think the average tinkerer is? I've seen accountants do this with nothing more than a fleeting interest in electronics.

Ok given your search results I retract my statement. Some people are intellectually challenged.
For the record the first 4 results on "ISP Programmer"
1. Wikipedia entry on ISP with not 1, not 2, but 3 pictures showing the pinout for AVR microcontrollers. Yes 3 pictures on the first entry on the first search. It's amazing that you couldn't figure this out.
2. This is even better. The second entry is a link to a tutorial on Arduino.cc on how to use and Arduino to program AVRs. We're actually talking about the application that you said is too hard for people to do, which I said requires a minimal amount of hardware, and the tutorial shows you how to do it with no hardware, complete with pictures on how the wiring is done (not even a schematic a breadboard picture), a tutorial which does the very thing we're talking about from the very site people are most likely to use if they play with arduinos. You just can't make this shit up.
3. A link to adafruit's blog with a list of cheap ISP programmers and how to use them.
4. A link to Atmel's Application note on AVRs.

Have you tried http://www.arduino.cc/ and then clicking on buy? 4euro + VAT for the exact chip in the Arduino UNO preloaded with the bootloader right from the source.

Sure. We're discussing an article that is discussing laying out a PCB. If they can layout a circuit board then they can get USB working. The tight specs and tolerances on USB matter a bit on high speed USB2.0 applications but the vast majority of people are going to do something trivially basic like load the LUFA libraries out of the box and click go, or load V-USB. Incidentally a how-to with pictures on how to get V-USB working is the first hit on Google for "AVR USB".

Nope just the microcontroller, right from the Arduino website with everything preloaded.

Unless you have any kind of application that requires any kind of critical timing, or you actually want to run an AVR at even remotely above half its rated speed.

Yep beginner projects like making a clock without an external RTC, flashing or multiplexing LEDs, or god forbid you do something as amazing as connect it to USB which is a built in feature of many microcontrollers these days which they can't do with the horrendously inaccurate internal RC oscillator.

You'll need a crystal for any of the above applications. But sure if you're flashing an LED on and off at some rough approximation at once Hz then there's no need for a crystal, but if you think that's the kind of thing "beginners" are doing then you've got some reading to do.

I wasn't making any comment on the manufacturer's choice, but rather the assertion from the GP that it is important that we can install our own OS on the TV.

The "geek thing" is the idea of being able to choose the OS having any weight on the product choice what so ever. Tinkering is a rarity amongst the consuming general populous.

I think we are going to need some mass consumer legal action to force the issue. In the UK the Sale of Goods Act requires devices to last a "reasonable length of time", which for cheap TVs is usually thought to be about 5 years and for expensive ones maybe 10 years. If the TV breaks down before then the retailer, not the manufacturer, has to sort it out. If it was half way through its expected life they could either fix it or give you a partial refund for lost functionality. A dead TV would get you a 50% refund, one where the smart features are broken would be based on how much you use the feature and decided by a court if needs be.

Some TVs from 2011 are losing YouTube support. I use the YouTube app on my TV every day. Replacement of this lost functionality would require something like an Amazon FireTV stick for £35. I would expect the retailer to offer me that, or at least part of that cost, if my TV broke down before it is 10 years old. It might not be a lot, but the retailer has to pay it and it might force manufacturers to try a bit harder.

Having said that, even if you were screwed, a FireTV stick or similar is so cheap now it's not a massive loss. If you get 3+ years of app use out of the TV that's good, and don't forget the smart features include other useful stuff like recording to USB HDD and streaming via DLNA etc.

I have a Panasonic smart TV. The only place it has ads is in the app store, nowhere else. If it did I would have returned it, or not bought it in the first place. Not all smart devices are maximum evil, ads everywhere all the time etc.

Mine has an OS based on FreeBSD. I use the smart features to watch YouTube pretty much every day. Various electronics and woodworking video blogs mainly. I use the network media player from time to time too. It's a good system from 2012.

Reminds me of the system Capcom created for people who disconnect when they are losing in PvP. Unfortunately that system didn't work well as people with crappy internet connections were penalised.

Who cares? No really outside of a few geeks who are likely already running out and buying dumb TVs due to the typical anti-corporate agenda type anger at company developed software, who really cares? The average consumer doesn't, and the average geek has shunned smartTVs for the ultra slow, ultra crap "smart" experience they typically bring.

The vast majority of people barely know how a SmartTV works and are happy enough when the program guide correctly displays.
The small minority who do use the Smarts are happy enough to get a weather update and youtube.
The only people who care have already completely given up on the worthless steaming pile of excrement that is the TV vendor's software and will run Kodi, Apple TV, Chromecasts or similar such small devices.

I would go one step further and say the single most important feature that Panasonic TVs and Firefox OS can bring: A TV which actually turns on in under 30 bloody seconds. Everything else security included (who would be dumb enough to attach a smart TV to the internet after every vendor has been caught out attempting to screw their customers).

Sorry, I don't buy it. If it was as blatant as you say it was you could easily have documented it with a diary and some memos talking about decisions being made without an accompanying meeting. Other men and women could have done the same and made similar complaints. A bunch of you could have gotten rich.

What do you want to happen if you are unwilling to act, even when it's easy to do so? We don't have police investigating this sort of thing, it's up to you to report it.

Oh no doubt. The question is what is the value of life? Personally I'm just an active and excitable energy machine. I have problems with doing nothing (though I like the occasional day off). I even do the same on my holidays where I prefer to go hiking through some foreign country, climb some mountain, or go an experience something new and unique.

Some people like to sit on a cruise ship for a week at a time trying to maximise their chances of skin cancer. Others including my girlfriend's parents are happy in front of the TV watching the world go by.

I wasn't being derogatory or even judgmental. I'm just fascinated by the human mind's ability to find satisfaction (I assume) from something that I consider some form of personal hell.

I don't think subscriptions would sustain a site like Slashdot. Especially because they actually downgrade your experience in some ways (ads enabled, even if you have good karma), but also because other news sites that went subscription became ghost towns very quickly. They survived because they were mostly about the stories, but Slashdot is about comments so would effectively be dead.

Browsers need to support safe adverts. A single off-site image or text content. No scripts, no animation, no noise. Heavily sandboxed.

Not playing a computer game, or watching some other people do things on reality TV?

The thought process that goes on in some people's heads must be truly baffling.

What evidence do you have that certain people just can't do certain things because of lack of natural ability? Obviously some people have developmental issues, but in the far East where the attitude is that if you work hard you can learn anything it seems to be true.

With enough effort and support a person of average intelligence can learn to do most things, most jobs. Software engineering isn't some high science that requires exceptional minds, it's a process that can be learned and which is as much experience and knowledge as it is skill.

If you managers openly discriminated why didn't you document it? Of you did document it, why didn't you give the documentation to whatever anti-discrimination government bodies exist, or just sue them yourself and get rich? Don't complain that no-one else is helping men, help yourself.

Madculinism got a bad name, that's why. In its pure form it is essentially the same as feminism, so most guys who believe that stuff just call themselves feminists. There are people who describe themselves as masculinists, but they are essentially just misogynists and people who want to act like dicks and justify it.

So, MRAs use a different name to emphasise that they are interested in the rights issues, of which there are some genuine ones. Unfortunately many of them could be described as masculinists, and again people who really care about the issues just call themselves feminists.