They're not anticipating a post-Apocalyptic "Mad Max" landscape, just one where banks collapse and/or the government steals their savings. This has occurred in many countries within living memory to a greater or lesser degree.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/nyregion/fbi-tapes-give-glimpse-into-world-of-high-stakes-gambling.html

Nice. Bizarre racist abuse as you can't counter my arguments. Fyi, I and my ancestors have been in Britain since time immemorial.

Allowing multiple TVs per household per license does not contradict my statement that it's a tax on hardware. My objection - as you know perfectly well - is the lack of any reasonable mechanism for opting out of watching BBC channels and not having to buy a license.

The BBC's funding mechanism is so utterly indefensible that it almost renders any discussion of quality moot. A tax on hardware which goes exclusively to one content provider??? This is just ridiculous. Of course it manages to produce the occasional high quality programme but overall the standard is mediocre and falling. Also senior management are drawn from a very small soi-disant intellectual liberal elite.

"Another partial boon to FOSS communities is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA)." I guess when you're in jail for watching your DVD on a Linux box on the grounds you subverted the DRM you'll have that to console you.

Games? What do games have to do with it? How can these idiots be so muddled in their thinking? If disasters create a need for this sort of labour then build a platform and let people who want to help download a a client and get assigned some chunk to work on. The server aggregates results and assigns the chunks. Spread the word via social media when there's an urgent need. Job done. I don't play computer games at all these days but I'd be happy to tag images for an hour if it would help responders to a disaster. This utterly mistaken idea that this concept needs to be coupled with gaming can only have come from a sort of 'cargo cult' view on computing. Oh, look at all these geeks playing computer games all day, we need to harvest them for our tasks, so lets embed them in the games...

If you build a car then it's not the case that anyone else can perfectly replicate that car and distribute it globally at effectively zero cost. Therefore your analogy is invalid.

I'd say the astronomical (quantum mechanical?) amount of computing power required is more indicative of a lack of progress or any real theoretical ideas. The rapid progress in theoretical physics of the 20th century happened via theoretical breakthroughs and experimentation not computing.

Hehe you meant 'most' for minorities. Never mind. Should it be the government's job to extract £145/year from everyone with a TV so that it can be given to an extremely unrepresentative group to make programmes of interest to minorities? You obviously think it is, but most people would disagree.

See my answer to AC for more details but the BBC news has repeatedly been shown to be biased. They themselves have acknowledged that to some extent. The quality of other programmes is generally very poor. It would be more accurate to say I want to abolish the license fee rather than shut down the BBC. The alternative is for anyone who wants to try and run a commercial channel. With digital technology it's probably never been more achievable.

Luddite doesn't mean what you think it does. Anyway to cover your points I have ideological objections to a state owned broadcaster. I don't mind a government budget (from general taxation) for news or factual programming being distributed to various broadcasters but the current model is absurd. Would you agree with taxing every computer sold and paying Microsoft the money even if the user only ever used Linux? If you would then you'll support the BBC funding's method but for the rest of us ... If it's really great value (it isn't, it's terrible value - but that's what apologists always claim) then it will have no problem at all funding itself on a commercial basis. Strange how the BBC themselves are vehemently opposed to such a strategy despite what fantastic value they supposedly provide. You yourself are doing it now. Simultaneously claiming something is worth it (in an economic sense) and yet refusing to allow it to function in a normal economic way. Don't you find that suspicious? Can't you sense your own cognitive dissonance? Probably not.

I'm envious. I wish the UK government would shut down the BBC.

If a user requests a new feature or behaviour then capture it in tests, implement, and release. No-one can now overwrite the behaviour without breaking the tests which should force either some internal resolution or feedback to the user: "Bob said this number should be calculated this way, you asked for it this way, you need to agree between yourselves". If developers are overwriting each other's changes then you are really are doing it wrong.

I almost thought this was a troll it's so crazy. Of course there is a huge difference between designing a car and designing software. Manufacturing a car requires the assembly of thousands of physically pieces in a precise three-dimensional structure. The design process needs to analyse all the forces, internal and external, the car has to cope with, the flow of various fluids, electricity, changing conditions of temperature and humidity etc etc etc If a user suddenly wanted an extra window or a periscope or larger rims half-way through the process then it's not going to be possible. With software development changes like this to an application should be easy.