I have seen plenty of students at university (usually doing non-tech subjects) who have no idea how to use a computer. It's easy and natural to all slashdot readers, but not to everyone.
Most of todays jobs involve frequent interactions with computers, so schools are quite right to prepare their students for the workplace in this way.
I don't know, the german word "Kernspintomographie" still has the the nucleus in it, and i've never particularly heard anyone worrying about it...
Besides, there are enough people around who think that magnets are dangerous, better just not tell them what the acronym stands for. One of our Profs used to say that he was afraid of MRI machines, but mainly because he knew he was surrounded by hundreds of liters of liquid helium and nitrogen, though maybe we shouldn't point this out to the general public either...
> Correct -- as long as the following doesn't happen. [...]
that's why i said "in this case". At the moment there are companies with reasonably priced ink cartridges as well as the opportunity to buy them from competitors (canon is my personal favourite at the moment).
It all goes wrong when the tech companies are not run by engineers anymore. I find that most engineers think that they will get more customers (and hence more money) if they make their product either better or cheaper, or ideally both.
Business type people (in particular management consultants) will go to a tech company that is doing badly and change everything (marketing, sales force, management structure) except the product, as that is not so important... it drives me absolutely mad!
That's a different case. In my view it is fair enough for them to say you void their warranty if you get un-authorized dealers to work on it.
The correct analogy would be if they gave you the mini at a EUR 1000 discount if you signed a paper saying you would only get it repaired (and refueled) at BMW garages. In addition they would put a chip in their car that would make it stop if you bought fuel from a non-authorized dealer...
If you buy a product it's yours, and you should be able to do with it whatever you like. This includes letting other companies service it/refill it.
If the manufacturer retains control over the product he sells you to this degree, i would argue that it's not actually a sale at all, but more of a rental agreement, where the company retains a lot of rights as to what you can and cannot do with the product.
One thing i definetely think *should* be made illegal is the inclusion of a feature which devalues the product, like region encoding, or a chip that will stop it from working with "unauthorized" supplies. Any such practices are obviously not aimed at selling a superior product, but rather at carving up a market to their liking, and thus are contrary to the principles of a free market.
I think in this case you're right. The market will solve such problems as there are plenty of competitors, and while the entry barriers to any market are high, the startup cost for making printers is not as expensive as some other products (e.g. processors).
In general, I still think it is good if the legislature makes some rules as to how businesses are allowed to conduct themselves. One cannot propagate free trade but then allow companies to keep markets seperate by DVD region encoding, or by forcing exclusive agreements on dealers.
The EU has recently ruled against Volkswagen who priced their cars differently in different european countries and then made sure the italian dealers would not sell to german customers.
So hey, i'm all for free trade, but make sure it applies to all. Let me re-import Nike shoes from China if I want to, let me buy my DVDs where I like, give the consumers the transparency the corporate players demand from their suppliers.
Personally i think it's simply a bad plan... In the consumer market, MS products appeal to your typical middle class family. The parent who think they get something sensible for their kids instead of a game-cube. If they start making their products look "cool" i think they'd open up a huge gap for another product (e.g. linux) to present itself as the sensible alternative where you can get your work done...
Their most important market, the business world, is going to be even less impressed...
I think they'll have to leave the cool to someone else (and i don't think it will work anyway)
It's quite easy to build a system that analyses something for a certain property, be it the net, the stockmarket, society, etc. etc. unfortunately, as soon as this system becomes well known, everyone tries to manipulate it. In the stockmarket people try to create formations common in technical analysis to make other traders buy/sell a certain stock, and in internet searching people set up huge arrays of pages referencing each other or scatter ridiculous numbers of irrelevant key-words over their page.
I think i read it the first time in one of the old Asimov books, that to predict something well the predicted system must have no knowledge of the prediction... (note to physicsts, i'm talking of systems involving people, not a mass on a spring:) )
Bloody hell... i'm not surprised software development is moving out of the US if college students are charging $100/hour. Of course i don't know what sort of genius he is, but i would have thought $25 (the amount the parent suggested) quite a reasonable wage for a student (considering what others get paid doing shitty work in a fast food place where they don't earn anything).
After all, if you're a student, you're most likely in part doing this because you're learning in the process. Whenever i've done a programming project, i usually learned a new concept (whatever, new language, different databases etc.) in the process and wasted a lot of time doing so. Afterwards i usually figured out that i could now do a similar project in 1/4 the time.
So if $100 is reasonable for a professional, a student charging 25 is still ok...
>This is coming from the biggest capitalist you are likely to meet. > But without competition, capitalism doesn't work.
Thank you!
I can't believe the number of people who say "the free market will sort it out, just privatise" without looking at whether they're creating a free market...
But it's good to know there are some sensible arch capitalists out there:)
> The owner of the highway does have monopoly, but it has monopoly over the highway, just like > you have monopoly over your property or yourself (at least in theory).
All I'm saying is that they shouldn't. These things are what i consider common good, just like the sea, rivers, air, etc. What you let people purchase areas of the sea? How about a company got hold of a strip of territory across the atlantic?
In cases such as roads the "value" of them is mainly due to the place where they are, not much related to the investment going in.
You would probably say that if you don't want to pay a fee to the company owning the road your house is on, you should move... that's like me saying if you don't like taxes go to a different country.
The difference with a state is that you have elections as another recourse. Legislators need to justify their acts to their constituents which are also their customers. Private companies however only need to justify their actions to their shareholders.
So in cases where one is (actually or practically) forced to use a certain supplier (roads, electricity grid, water lines) I am much happier if it's under control of an organisation that is accountable to its customers, as market forces don't work without competition.
> For example, smaller towns or house blocks in larger cities could own their own transmission > lines within the town or block, or street or whatever.
the community owns transmission = a public utility.
Leaving it up to the "local community" has the other nasty side-effect that slums will get worse, the rural areas won't have electricity (too expensive) etc. etc.
> You have to pay tolls on may "public" or "state-owned" roads even today
you don't where i live:). If a big highway is owned by one company they have a monopoly. They can charge whatever they like. They can do poor maintenance, etc. etc. How long would it take to build a rival road in the centre of NYC???
> I am quite sure that free market would provide the optiomal solution > even in this case, as it usually tends to
The free market usually tends to create an optimal solution. Unforutantely what is being optimised is capital return, nothing else.
An optimal light-bulb would be cheap to buy, energy efficient and not break (for the consumer). An optimal ligh-bulb for the few companies selling them would be cheap to produce, expensive to sell and would have to be replaced at regular intervals.
Companies seek to maximise profits. Do you really think it wouldn't be possible for HP to build their printers in a way that doesn't make you fork out a fortune for replacement ink cartridges (with the print head attached to so only they can deliver it?)
Anyway, I think those that think free markets will always give the best solution are deluded at best.
> though the notion of "state-owned" is somewhat amusing, since the > mere existence of the "state" depends on the tax it extorts from you
A state owned company is owned by the people. It doesn't "extort" money from you. In fact it's very similar to your example of a neighbourhood owning transmission lines. Everyone pays a fee for the provision of services (in the case of the state, you can start with defense, roads, legal system, education,....)
I'm not saying there are many well working states around, but for some things I believe they provide a better solution that just having free markets...
So how do you propose to have competition in the energy transmission business. Do you really want three or 4 companies to each dig up the road and give you a range of plugs?
At the moment, all competition is kind of virtual, they all use the same lines. No-one has an incentive to make them fail-safe as it applies to all players in the market. Where there is a seperate transmission line company (e.g. national grid in the uk), they have no competition...
I think there are some things, like roads, water supply, electricity transmission, that are very difficult to privatise well as they are monoplies by the very nature of what they are...
There is absolutely no point in mining coal in Britain (or Germany as for that) as it's way more expensive than mining coal in a number of other countries, where you don't have to go 2000 metres under ground for it!
Maybe if easily accessible coal runs out in the world, mining will become efficient in Britain again (without huge subsidies), but until then you might as well import the coal, if coal is what you want.
Even economically it makes great sense, just like it would make sense to import oil (now that it is still quite cheap) and leave the remaining oil in the north sea for 50 years when it's going to be $100+/barrel.
Of course the problem is that if you only need to do this once a year (because your phone has dies) where did you get the muscle memory from? 10 years ago I used to know dozens of phone numbers, now i don't know any... in the rare event i use a different phone i look up the number in my mobile:).
Really? I thought the difference in votes was something like 500,000. you really think the margin of error is that big?
Assuming that miscounts happen randomly and thus equally on both sides, with a probability of about 10% (very high) then the margin of error for each persons total is ~2500 votes.
To wipe out a difference of 500 000 votes you would need a systematic error of some form.
To illustrate this, imagine that every voter votes completely at random. For 100M voters and two candidates that gives an average result of 50% each +- sqrt (50M) = 7070. The probability of a difference of 500 000 votes or more even in a completely random election is negligable. Even allowing for some non-random effects like different voting machines in areas where there are more democrats/republicans this result is extremely significant.
So, while the difference in votes in Florida was not statistically significant, the national popular vote certainly was...
could you elaborate on this? I was under the impression punch-cards were to blame...
If voting districts are sufficiently small (1000s of voters) counting by hand with representatives from major parties present can be done in a matter of hours. Aggregating results can of course be performed electronically...
So unless you doubt people's ability to count, pen and paper is pretty accurate...
The government might "mandate" its use for itselft / its departments / offices / agencies, just like a big corporation might. They certainly won't mandate the use of open software for private enterprises. Now open standards might be a different issue there.
Anyway, what does that have to do with it being free software? Even if some "rogue state" decided to mandate the use of a particular software for its entire population, that would not change anything about how free or not that software is... so i don't really understand what you're trying to see...
The problem for making a good NMR magnet is not the high field but sufficient homogeneity over the sample volume. Also, 25 Tesla is not that far off what currently used magnets can do, 21 Tesla magnets for NMR are hideously expensive, and not exactly standard, but there are quite a few of them around in the world...
Still, you're right of course, any advances in magnet technology will be welcome:), i just don't think this is a particularly big breakthrough.
As for MRI people. They generally work at much lower fields, as the magnets need to accomodate huge samples (humans) rather than the little tubes solution state nmr people use... I've seen a 4.5 T one for brain-imaging, but i think the standard ones are about 1.5T.
I think the point of an economy of abundance is that "keeping score" is not really necessary in most cases. Take the whole copyright discussion for example. Digital information is by nature abundent, but we imposes scarcity to fit it into our economic system.
Imagine that content creators were paid from a central fund (e.g. taxes), and then everyone gets access to the content. The remuneration of content providers could be based on a voting system (e.g. each citizen can distribute 100 points to various companies, who promise to produce more good products, much like politicians promise (falsely) to provide good politics).
The effect is that for the same amount of money going into the system, the content will be available to everyone, thus greatly improving the benefit to society with no extra cost.
Of course everyone will tell me i'm nuts and that's not how economics works. It's true, it's not how classical economics works. The point is that rather than putting a new "product" into the straightjacket of traditional economics by imposing artificial scarcity, maybe some of the 19th century concepts economists use need re-examining....
> Bud, I live in the sticks, tobacco farmers, factory workers, dope growers/manufacturers and > people drawing a check off of uncle sam is who lives in my neighborhood (if you can call it that) > R: I'll pay you $6 > D: I'll pay you $10, but I need $5 of that in taxes
Let me think: R takes no taxes, so I have to pay privately for education, health, security, roads,..... D takes $5 taxes. Even assuming gross inefficiency of 20% admin, and assuming I'm a below average tax-payer (poor), I get at least $4 of services for it. Thus 5+4=9 which is much better than 6.
People have this really warped perception of what happens to taxes... the money does NOT disappear, it pays for things.
> Think of the end user with every single line of code that you write. Take a picture of a > technically inept parent or aunt and stick it on the side of your monitor to remind yourself.
Why would any open source developer want to do this? Unless someone thinks there is money to be made from developing open source software (ie someone wanting to sell linux computers at Wallmart) that is suitable for technically inept parents, I can't see many developers going to great lengths so that it becomes fool-proof.
well, you just spelled out the solution. Have a low monthly or yearly fee to cover the cost of bandwidth.
So long as it doesn't cost extra to entertain non-brits it's not a problem for them. Also, one might argue that broadcasting british TV around the world is in the british interest, the more exposure you have to a culture the more likely it is you will visit / do business etc. etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I have seen plenty of students at university (usually doing non-tech subjects) who have no idea how to use a computer. It's easy and natural to all slashdot readers, but not to everyone.
Most of todays jobs involve frequent interactions with computers, so schools are quite right to prepare their students for the workplace in this way.
I don't know, the german word "Kernspintomographie" still has the the nucleus in it, and i've never particularly heard anyone worrying about it...
Besides, there are enough people around who think that magnets are dangerous, better just not tell them what the acronym stands for. One of our Profs used to say that he was afraid of MRI machines, but mainly because he knew he was surrounded by hundreds of liters of liquid helium and nitrogen, though maybe we shouldn't point this out to the general public either...
> Correct -- as long as the following doesn't happen. [...]
that's why i said "in this case". At the moment there are companies with reasonably priced ink cartridges as well as the opportunity to buy them from competitors (canon is my personal favourite at the moment).
It all goes wrong when the tech companies are not run by engineers anymore. I find that most engineers think that they will get more customers (and hence more money) if they make their product either better or cheaper, or ideally both.
Business type people (in particular management consultants) will go to a tech company that is doing badly and change everything (marketing, sales force, management structure) except the product, as that is not so important... it drives me absolutely mad!
That's a different case. In my view it is fair enough for them to say you void their warranty if you get un-authorized dealers to work on it.
The correct analogy would be if they gave you the mini at a EUR 1000 discount if you signed a paper saying you would only get it repaired (and refueled) at BMW garages. In addition they would put a chip in their car that would make it stop if you bought fuel from a non-authorized dealer...
If you buy a product it's yours, and you should be able to do with it whatever you like. This includes letting other companies service it/refill it.
If the manufacturer retains control over the product he sells you to this degree, i would argue that it's not actually a sale at all, but more of a rental agreement, where the company retains a lot of rights as to what you can and cannot do with the product.
One thing i definetely think *should* be made illegal is the inclusion of a feature which devalues the product, like region encoding, or a chip that will stop it from working with "unauthorized" supplies. Any such practices are obviously not aimed at selling a superior product, but rather at carving up a market to their liking, and thus are contrary to the principles of a free market.
I think in this case you're right. The market will solve such problems as there are plenty of competitors, and while the entry barriers to any market are high, the startup cost for making printers is not as expensive as some other products (e.g. processors).
In general, I still think it is good if the legislature makes some rules as to how businesses are allowed to conduct themselves. One cannot propagate free trade but then allow companies to keep markets seperate by DVD region encoding, or by forcing exclusive agreements on dealers.
The EU has recently ruled against Volkswagen who priced their cars differently in different european countries and then made sure the italian dealers would not sell to german customers.
So hey, i'm all for free trade, but make sure it applies to all. Let me re-import Nike shoes from China if I want to, let me buy my DVDs where I like, give the consumers the transparency the corporate players demand from their suppliers.
Personally i think it's simply a bad plan... In the consumer market, MS products appeal to your typical middle class family. The parent who think they get something sensible for their kids instead of a game-cube. If they start making their products look "cool" i think they'd open up a huge gap for another product (e.g. linux) to present itself as the sensible alternative where you can get your work done...
Their most important market, the business world, is going to be even less impressed...
I think they'll have to leave the cool to someone else (and i don't think it will work anyway)
Ponxx
There's a simple reason for this:
:) )
It's quite easy to build a system that analyses something for a certain property, be it the net, the stockmarket, society, etc. etc. unfortunately, as soon as this system becomes well known, everyone tries to manipulate it. In the stockmarket people try to create formations common in technical analysis to make other traders buy/sell a certain stock, and in internet searching people set up huge arrays of pages referencing each other or scatter ridiculous numbers of irrelevant key-words over their page.
I think i read it the first time in one of the old Asimov books, that to predict something well the predicted system must have no knowledge of the prediction... (note to physicsts, i'm talking of systems involving people, not a mass on a spring
Ponxx
Bloody hell... i'm not surprised software development is moving out of the US if college students are charging $100/hour. Of course i don't know what sort of genius he is, but i would have thought $25 (the amount the parent suggested) quite a reasonable wage for a student (considering what others get paid doing shitty work in a fast food place where they don't earn anything).
After all, if you're a student, you're most likely in part doing this because you're learning in the process. Whenever i've done a programming project, i usually learned a new concept (whatever, new language, different databases etc.) in the process and wasted a lot of time doing so. Afterwards i usually figured out that i could now do a similar project in 1/4 the time.
So if $100 is reasonable for a professional, a student charging 25 is still ok...
Ponxx
>This is coming from the biggest capitalist you are likely to meet.
:)
> But without competition, capitalism doesn't work.
Thank you!
I can't believe the number of people who say "the free market will sort it out, just privatise" without looking at whether they're creating a free market...
But it's good to know there are some sensible arch capitalists out there
Ponxx
> The owner of the highway does have monopoly, but it has monopoly over the highway, just like
> you have monopoly over your property or yourself (at least in theory).
All I'm saying is that they shouldn't. These things are what i consider common good, just like the sea, rivers, air, etc. What you let people purchase areas of the sea? How about a company got hold of a strip of territory across the atlantic?
In cases such as roads the "value" of them is mainly due to the place where they are, not much related to the investment going in.
You would probably say that if you don't want to pay a fee to the company owning the road your house is on, you should move... that's like me saying if you don't like taxes go to a different country.
The difference with a state is that you have elections as another recourse. Legislators need to justify their acts to their constituents which are also their customers. Private companies however only need to justify their actions to their shareholders.
So in cases where one is (actually or practically) forced to use a certain supplier (roads, electricity grid, water lines) I am much happier if it's under control of an organisation that is accountable to its customers, as market forces don't work without competition.
Ponxx
> For example, smaller towns or house blocks in larger cities could own their own transmission
:). If a big highway is owned by one company they have a monopoly. They can charge whatever they like. They can do poor maintenance, etc. etc. How long would it take to build a rival road in the centre of NYC???
....)
> lines within the town or block, or street or whatever.
the community owns transmission = a public utility.
Leaving it up to the "local community" has the other nasty side-effect that slums will get worse, the rural areas won't have electricity (too expensive) etc. etc.
> You have to pay tolls on may "public" or "state-owned" roads even today
you don't where i live
> I am quite sure that free market would provide the optiomal solution
> even in this case, as it usually tends to
The free market usually tends to create an optimal solution. Unforutantely what is being optimised is capital return, nothing else.
An optimal light-bulb would be cheap to buy, energy efficient and not break (for the consumer). An optimal ligh-bulb for the few companies selling them would be cheap to produce, expensive to sell and would have to be replaced at regular intervals.
Companies seek to maximise profits. Do you really think it wouldn't be possible for HP to build their printers in a way that doesn't make you fork out a fortune for replacement ink cartridges (with the print head attached to so only they can deliver it?)
Anyway, I think those that think free markets will always give the best solution are deluded at best.
> though the notion of "state-owned" is somewhat amusing, since the
> mere existence of the "state" depends on the tax it extorts from you
A state owned company is owned by the people. It doesn't "extort" money from you. In fact it's very similar to your example of a neighbourhood owning transmission lines. Everyone pays a fee for the provision of services (in the case of the state, you can start with defense, roads, legal system, education,
I'm not saying there are many well working states around, but for some things I believe they provide a better solution that just having free markets...
Ponxx
So how do you propose to have competition in the energy transmission business. Do you really want three or 4 companies to each dig up the road and give you a range of plugs?
At the moment, all competition is kind of virtual, they all use the same lines. No-one has an incentive to make them fail-safe as it applies to all players in the market. Where there is a seperate transmission line company (e.g. national grid in the uk), they have no competition...
I think there are some things, like roads, water supply, electricity transmission, that are very difficult to privatise well as they are monoplies by the very nature of what they are...
Ponxx
There is absolutely no point in mining coal in Britain (or Germany as for that) as it's way more expensive than mining coal in a number of other countries, where you don't have to go 2000 metres under ground for it!
Maybe if easily accessible coal runs out in the world, mining will become efficient in Britain again (without huge subsidies), but until then you might as well import the coal, if coal is what you want.
Even economically it makes great sense, just like it would make sense to import oil (now that it is still quite cheap) and leave the remaining oil in the north sea for 50 years when it's going to be $100+/barrel.
Ponxx
Of course the problem is that if you only need to do this once a year (because your phone has dies) where did you get the muscle memory from? 10 years ago I used to know dozens of phone numbers, now i don't know any... in the rare event i use a different phone i look up the number in my mobile :).
Ponxx
Really? I thought the difference in votes was something like 500,000. you really think the margin of error is that big?
Assuming that miscounts happen randomly and thus equally on both sides, with a probability of about 10% (very high) then the margin of error for each persons total is ~2500 votes.
To wipe out a difference of 500 000 votes you would need a systematic error of some form.
To illustrate this, imagine that every voter votes completely at random. For 100M voters and two candidates that gives an average result of 50% each +- sqrt (50M) = 7070. The probability of a difference of 500 000 votes or more even in a completely random election is negligable. Even allowing for some non-random effects like different voting machines in areas where there are more democrats/republicans this result is extremely significant.
So, while the difference in votes in Florida was not statistically significant, the national popular vote certainly was...
Ponxx
could you elaborate on this? I was under the impression punch-cards were to blame...
If voting districts are sufficiently small (1000s of voters) counting by hand with representatives from major parties present can be done in a matter of hours. Aggregating results can of course be performed electronically...
So unless you doubt people's ability to count, pen and paper is pretty accurate...
Ponxx
The government might "mandate" its use for itselft / its departments / offices / agencies, just like a big corporation might. They certainly won't mandate the use of open software for private enterprises. Now open standards might be a different issue there.
Anyway, what does that have to do with it being free software? Even if some "rogue state" decided to mandate the use of a particular software for its entire population, that would not change anything about how free or not that software is... so i don't really understand what you're trying to see...
ponxx
If that's a publicity stunt it's the worst one i've ever seen...
Whatever she says, they sued a 12 year old, surely not the kind of heavy user with a lot of criminal energy they say they go after...
The problem for making a good NMR magnet is not the high field but sufficient homogeneity over the sample volume. Also, 25 Tesla is not that far off what currently used magnets can do, 21 Tesla magnets for NMR are hideously expensive, and not exactly standard, but there are quite a few of them around in the world...
:), i just don't think this is a particularly big breakthrough.
Still, you're right of course, any advances in magnet technology will be welcome
As for MRI people. They generally work at much lower fields, as the magnets need to accomodate huge samples (humans) rather than the little tubes solution state nmr people use... I've seen a 4.5 T one for brain-imaging, but i think the standard ones are about 1.5T.
> Scientology, on the other hand, is just a scam to extort the rich.
Good point. Most religions are quite happy to extort the poor as well....
I think the point of an economy of abundance is that "keeping score" is not really necessary in most cases. Take the whole copyright discussion for example. Digital information is by nature abundent, but we imposes scarcity to fit it into our economic system.
Imagine that content creators were paid from a central fund (e.g. taxes), and then everyone gets access to the content. The remuneration of content providers could be based on a voting system (e.g. each citizen can distribute 100 points to various companies, who promise to produce more good products, much like politicians promise (falsely) to provide good politics).
The effect is that for the same amount of money going into the system, the content will be available to everyone, thus greatly improving the benefit to society with no extra cost.
Of course everyone will tell me i'm nuts and that's not how economics works. It's true, it's not how classical economics works. The point is that rather than putting a new "product" into the straightjacket of traditional economics by imposing artificial scarcity, maybe some of the 19th century concepts economists use need re-examining....
Ponxx
> However, the obvious solution to this, contrary to the article, is a welfare system.
Isn't that exactly what he proposes? Quite radical, but a welfare system still...
Ponxx
> Bud, I live in the sticks, tobacco farmers, factory workers, dope growers/manufacturers and
.....
> people drawing a check off of uncle sam is who lives in my neighborhood (if you can call it that)
> R: I'll pay you $6
> D: I'll pay you $10, but I need $5 of that in taxes
Let me think:
R takes no taxes, so I have to pay privately for education, health, security, roads,
D takes $5 taxes. Even assuming gross inefficiency of 20% admin, and assuming I'm a below average tax-payer (poor), I get at least $4 of services for it. Thus 5+4=9 which is much better than 6.
People have this really warped perception of what happens to taxes... the money does NOT disappear, it pays for things.
Ponxx
> Think of the end user with every single line of code that you write. Take a picture of a
> technically inept parent or aunt and stick it on the side of your monitor to remind yourself.
Why would any open source developer want to do this? Unless someone thinks there is money to be made from developing open source software (ie someone wanting to sell linux computers at Wallmart) that is suitable for technically inept parents, I can't see many developers going to great lengths so that it becomes fool-proof.
well, you just spelled out the solution. Have a low monthly or yearly fee to cover the cost of bandwidth.
So long as it doesn't cost extra to entertain non-brits it's not a problem for them. Also, one might argue that broadcasting british TV around the world is in the british interest, the more exposure you have to a culture the more likely it is you will visit / do business etc. etc.
Ponxx