If you propose making the law so that it is illegal to view an image of child porn, then anyone who accidently stumbles over it, either through clicking to go somewhere not as described or via malware, is criminalised. However, even though you've been modded flamebait, I think you've got some kind of point. I do personally believe routine viewing of external photos and/or videos involving children is harmful to those children, and should probably be outlawed. I guess I should say potentially harmful, since only knowledge of the viewing and publication would be the issue. I was sexually abused as a child (though not photographed), and I know I'd have a massive issue with people legally viewing (but not possessing) images of it. The mere existance of images of me would severely piss me off, though I know there are none. Obviously the law should involve some kind of definition to exclude accidental viewing, or malware installation, which may be hard to do.
IANAL, so correct me if I'm wrong. The problem as I see it is this : It is entirely legal for a person to pay to view images and/or videos on a website, as long as they download nothing. Obviously the owners of that site are in deep legal shit, and so they should be. However those funding the site by their payments are not. Again IANAL, so I may be wrong on this... there may be laws forbidding assisting publication of child porn which include this.
The law's completely screwed anyway in that people can and have been prosecuted for sending pictures of themselves to their boyfriend/girlfriend, and both have been put on the sex offenders list, so cannot work with children for the rest of their life. In the uk, it's perfectly legal for two 16 year olds to have sex, but not send pictures of themselves to each other. Wikipedia is allowed to host images like this (NSFW), but if you have that image on your HD, you're breaking the law. Accidently downloading any porn involving seventeen year olds is automatically illegal, even if there is no reason to suspect those in the images/video are under 18. Cartoon porn involving minors is now illegal in the UK (how do you judge which cartoon character is over 18, and which under?). Speaking of which, if I think the 2012 Olympics logo looks like Lisa Simpson fellating someone, am I breaking the law? Meh, the law is currently proper FUBAR.
I expect that most of the time, power tool injuries stem from user errors
Almost all injuries in all aspects of life stem from user errors. It's very rare, but very media friendly, when it's not.
My dad mangled his thumb with an angle grinder a while back, but honestly what idiot blames the angle grinder? It's a tool, and if it does what it says it does, then how is the manufacturer to blame? Anyone who doesn't treat any kind of machinery with respect almost deserves to get bitten. We just went to a&e and he got sorted out, and no long term harm done.
I did worse washing up a pint glass that popped out with my hand in it... I've still got 0 feeling in the outside of my right little finger because I severed the nerve... should I sue the glass manufacturer?
Technically they never promised a referendum if it was ratified. They only promised a referendum if it could be effectual, and now the only way to drop out of the Lisbon treaty is to drop out of Europe altogether, which would be economic suicide IMO.
If you haven't noticed, the UK is horribly in debt. The ID card fiasco can be dropped pretty easily - there is nothing really dependant upon it, and everyone's realised that it won't solve any problems. I can see the Conservatives dropping it.
More of a problem is initiatives like the NHS database which don't get into the headlines as much, which has cost, thus far, at least six billion. To put that in perspective, that is 100 pound out of every single UK resident's pocket. Try a poll on that, and see whether it's worth 100 quid to the average person.
My main point here - Claiming those who vote lib dem are tentative is patently stupid. Have you even looked at any of the policies? I'll vote lib dem because they'll reduce my taxes, and push proportional representation. I earn not too much, and I estimate about 50% of what I earn goes to the government. I use hardly any government services (apart from the obvious, such as roads). Anyone who has a kid gets child tax credit, which I should not pay for. I am paying way more in tax as a proportion of my income than those earning 10 times what I do, and the lib dems are going to sort some of that out.
Not all dogs are registered - to be honest I didn't even know of this database. Unless they actually test clandestinely (perhaps at the vet's), none of the dogs I know are on the database. There have been recent proposals however about compulsary insurance for dogs, which fortunately seem to be not being put through because of their unpopularity and the coming election. Why the fuck they needed the dog's DNA anyway, is confusing. From the BBC:
Johnson was arrested as he fled from the scene of the murder in Larkhall Park bare-chested and covered in blood.
New technology, used for the first time, proved by a billion-to-one probability that some of the blood came from his pit bull-mastiff crossbreed dog, Tyson, which had been knifed during the attack.
The rest was shown to come from the teenage murder victim.
FFS, it doesn't take Poirot + CSI to figure this one out, does it?
Tell them to use the regular account and call you when the admin uac account pops up.
Wait... seriously? This may work if you're supporting a couple of people who never install new hardware (cameras, printers, satnavs, every last electronic device), but I do not want to be rung at all hours of the day with a relative asking if it's ok to install their new gadget. Not to mention upgrading drivers, etc.
Admittedly your post may not have been a troll, but it was hugely misguided. To be honest, you could have posted it to _anyone_, no matter what their antivirus protection. No one knows of viruses they have that they don't know of, obviously. If you'd have posted information about how the OP was at risk because of his behaviour, it might have been useful.
I'm basically in the same boat as you. I never run anything I don't actively go out and get. This simple rule has kept me virus free for 10 years, running win2k and Vista in the last couple of years, no antivirus or firewall (most of the time)
I realise anyone with any kind of technical nouce could probably hack my machine, but I've been surfing and downloading and using the internet for that long, and have had no deleterious effects. I did get a virus on my win2k box about 10 years ago (I think it was actually from a file from a friend, but it's been that long that I don't remember), it corrupted a few files and was pretty easily removed - a couple of hours. IIRC, I did have antivirus active scanning on at the time. I have saved hours and hours by not dealing with antivirus at all since.
Basically, my advice to people who are relatively savvy is not to bother with antivirus. Once antivirus detects anything, it's generally too late. AV can be useful for people who have _no_ clue, but they're bound to get infected anyway sooner or later.
You have missed something. There's plenty of available information on time travel in the dark side of the web, or at least there will be in 6 months time.
_Anyone_ can create a whole universe from scratch. It is easy as hell. Making it interesting and coherent is the main challenge. A universe that is either interesting or coherent is pretty useless. By the standards of its time, Star Wars was astonishingly interesting, and relatively coherent (though the latter has dwindled with subsequent releases). LoTR has brilliant coherency, and is by popular opinion interesting too (though I can't generally see the attraction).
DOS was however the main PC gaming O/S for a long time after, purely because everything loaded on top of it used more conventional memory. I remember completely ignoring all releases of windows, because all major games just required DOS.
This might sound like a dangerous situation, but just as I don't think content providers should be able to lock up their content indefinitely behind a purely legal shield, neither do I think society has a right to go "thought police" on everyone and somehow require that we all hand over every idea or concrete work we conceive of in some open format. That's far too invasive an idea to be ethical, and far too broad a measure to be practical.
Copyright law is essentially a state sanctioned monopoly which tells everyone what they can or cannot publish. The entire system has been the business of the law for ages. If the law did not want to interfere, there would be no copyright law.
In short, if someone is willing to share a work, but only on their terms and with the ability to enforce those terms in practice, I don't see what business the law has telling them they can't.
The terms used to share the work are enforced by the governemnt. The government already has granted a publisher privileges by protecting the work with copyright laws. These are not a god given right, and if a publisher wants these privileges then they can play by the rules. If a publisher does not want government protection then they need not use the copyright laws. As long as the government is protecting copyright, they have all the right in the world to define terms.
In that regard, there is no law that entitles someone to access a particular work, even after a certain period of time.
Sorry for going out of order. I believe this this is the crux of our difference of opinion. The government places controls on others replicating a publisher's work for the publisher's benefit. Claiming the govenment should not interfere is a little hypocritical when government interference is absolutely necessary for any copyright system.
I am absolutely not proposing a free for all, as you saw in my original post. However, copyright is not an essential human right, it is a privilege granted by the governemnt purely to encourage artistic (or other intellectual pursuits) profiteering. All copyright law is basically governmental interference on behalf of the publisher. Restrictions in copyright law only apply to the publisher when the choose to accept the government sanctione protection.
I think you are possibly right about the exclusivity thing - I was actually thinking along the lines you are, but did not come to a firm decision. The trouble with exclusive deals though is that the entire publication could end up a disaster, and the creator would have _no_ recourse for the duration of it. They could sign a percentage deal and then the publisher could backtrack, leaving the author in limbo. If exclusive deals would work, they could only be very short. Personally I'd be wary of anything over one year.
Perhaps limited secondary copyright could be passed on to dependants, I would definitely argue against primary copyright being so. Birthrights should not be encouraged generally, IMO.
DRM does not work, at the moment. All it does is inconvenience legitimate users. It does not touch "pirates".
I'm slightly worried about the extent of DRM. _IF_ (and you can see it's a big if) effective DRM does come to pass, media corporations will effectively be able to bypass the law, allowing only who they want to use their products, irrespective of copyrights or anything else. Copyright law would be irrelevant in that case because the only way to use their products would be to ascribe to their DRM. This could even happen with our current laws, although we will not see it for a hundred years or so because of the absurd copyrights. Shortening copyright would speed this process.
Re:This explains a lot.
on
Window Pain
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· Score: 1
Sorry to reply to my own post, and completely O/T still, but:
Official US Guidelines advise a maximum of 40g refined sugar for every 2000 calories consumed. This equates to 8 percent of calories.
Re:This explains a lot.
on
Window Pain
·
· Score: 1
This is a decent example, though not satisfied with it being just milk, they manage to cram 76g of sugar in there too. That's about 1/6 of the cup.
Re:Firefox + NoScript + Adblock Plus + FlashBlocke
on
Window Pain
·
· Score: 1
Joe sixpack is not going to right click, and send to the website the cut and paste.
This solution is not a solution. Those who know about annoying popups have already blocked them. Those who do not know about preventing annoying popups are unlikely to right click, grab the route, and email it off to the site owner. It would effect basically nothing.
I agree with you to some degree, but the copyright system currently is completely broken. Here's what I propose:
Copyright is non-transferrable. The creator _cannot_ sign away their copyright.
- Copyright lasts for about 10 years.
- Exclusive licenses are illegal. The copyright holder must be able to license to who they want, whenever they want.
- Secondary copyright lasts for 50 years. Secondary copyright entitles the copyright holder to around 15% of the sale value of anything of theirs sold between the end of primary copyright and 50 years. (This is to prevent publishers and music labels profiteering off work by just publishing everything 10 years old, and nothing coming to the creator. Note this does not affect free copying of the work).
- Corporations can (obviously) hold copyright, however only for work done by employees actively working for them. Any work created in an Employee's free time is inescapably the employee's.
- All copyright finishes at the death of the creator.
There are issues to be worked out with this system, eg. joint copyrighted works and disputes within the group. More importantly, this may lead to an increase in DRM as corporations seek to protect their content themselves. At least it would without other laws restricting their rights to do so. However, _all_ of the artists and creators would benefit, and society would benefit as a result too.
I'd personally completely ban DRM if I was in power, but I'd make distribution of copyrighted works criminal (with a large minimum threshold amount, and/or a profit clause). I'd make software distributors legally obliged to provide interoperability (I know that's vague, I haven't pinned it down yet). I'd also require any software copyright holder to release source code after the 10 year primary copyright is up. We can all dream, right?
Like I said, I am _sure_ this kind of system, with loads of tweaks probably, would work. The current system is dead in the water, and is restricting artistic progress.
At high speeds, steering without power assistance should be easy. It's only really at low speeds that power assistance is needed. Nearly all modern power assisted steering systems assist a lot less at high speeds than low speeds.
I drive over 8 hours most days, mostly at a constant speed. I do not want leg cramps purely because someone on the internet tells me cruise control is a bad idea. I hate people who fluctuate their speed when I'm trying to overtake them in a truck, which IMO is far more problematic than cruise control.
As an aside, I did once check what putting cruise control would do if I engaged it in neutral in my manual truck... more stupid than I thought, it just kept revving up to try and maintain speed. I did suspect it might, though, so I was ready to cancel it.
I don't own a license, or a TV, and they've been fine with it (I do however use some BBC services, as I described here). They sent a man around, and he asked if I had a TV, I said no, and he said OK. Haven't heard from them since. I know there are horror stories about them being complete arseholes, but it doesn't always happen.
That's why some people here in the UK occasionally get pissed off with the BBC's spending and operations; we're all directly funding them, by law.
I'm not, I don't have a TV. I do listen to the radio about 8 hours a day (almost exclusively BBC, Radio 1, 4, and 5). I also use the BBC website loads, it's the only place I go for mainstream news. I also, and here's the really backwards bit, watch quite a lot of the BBC's output by using BBC iPlayer on my computer. And I don't have to pay anything for any of it.
I realise I am freeloading off of people who do have to pay the license fee, but radio listeners have been doing this for years. I'm also _far_ from rich, and any expense I need to justify, otherwise I'm broke. I pay 15 quid a month for mobile broadband, 15gb d/l a month, runs about 3mb/s (comparable to the crappy ADSL we have around here), pay less than that for my mobile, and don't pay for a landline.
Note : you are not however allowed to watch anything on the iplayer that is currently being broadcast, and a select few programs are not available (most importantly for me, MOTD). I do not know the rules if you download something, then accidently play it at exactly the same time as it is being repeated later.:P
Unfortunately, people who drive without insurance etc just find a car the same as theirs and copy the numberplate. Which means that all speeding tickets, parking fines, congestion charges etc go to the unfortunate owner of the original car. This is a growing problem, an ANPR is compounding it.
We've got the same war in the UK. I used to use cocaine regularly, then I got caught. I cannot afford to get caught again. Now I use mephedrone, which is way harder on the body, and is way harder to regulate adminstration, and is 100% legal. I know I don't need to use drugs, but I enjoy them, and it's my fucking choice. The law is currently forcing me to use something that has worse side effects, purely because the law hasn't caught up yet. When mephedrone is made illegal (and I have no doubt it will be), I will move on to something else I have little knowledge of.
Banning stuff does not work. There are an estimated 1 million regular cocaine users in the UK, and I wish I was one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
If you propose making the law so that it is illegal to view an image of child porn, then anyone who accidently stumbles over it, either through clicking to go somewhere not as described or via malware, is criminalised. However, even though you've been modded flamebait, I think you've got some kind of point. I do personally believe routine viewing of external photos and/or videos involving children is harmful to those children, and should probably be outlawed. I guess I should say potentially harmful, since only knowledge of the viewing and publication would be the issue. I was sexually abused as a child (though not photographed), and I know I'd have a massive issue with people legally viewing (but not possessing) images of it. The mere existance of images of me would severely piss me off, though I know there are none. Obviously the law should involve some kind of definition to exclude accidental viewing, or malware installation, which may be hard to do.
IANAL, so correct me if I'm wrong. The problem as I see it is this : It is entirely legal for a person to pay to view images and/or videos on a website, as long as they download nothing. Obviously the owners of that site are in deep legal shit, and so they should be. However those funding the site by their payments are not. Again IANAL, so I may be wrong on this... there may be laws forbidding assisting publication of child porn which include this.
The law's completely screwed anyway in that people can and have been prosecuted for sending pictures of themselves to their boyfriend/girlfriend, and both have been put on the sex offenders list, so cannot work with children for the rest of their life. In the uk, it's perfectly legal for two 16 year olds to have sex, but not send pictures of themselves to each other. Wikipedia is allowed to host images like this (NSFW), but if you have that image on your HD, you're breaking the law. Accidently downloading any porn involving seventeen year olds is automatically illegal, even if there is no reason to suspect those in the images/video are under 18. Cartoon porn involving minors is now illegal in the UK (how do you judge which cartoon character is over 18, and which under?). Speaking of which, if I think the 2012 Olympics logo looks like Lisa Simpson fellating someone, am I breaking the law? Meh, the law is currently proper FUBAR.
I expect that most of the time, power tool injuries stem from user errors
Almost all injuries in all aspects of life stem from user errors. It's very rare, but very media friendly, when it's not.
My dad mangled his thumb with an angle grinder a while back, but honestly what idiot blames the angle grinder? It's a tool, and if it does what it says it does, then how is the manufacturer to blame? Anyone who doesn't treat any kind of machinery with respect almost deserves to get bitten. We just went to a&e and he got sorted out, and no long term harm done.
I did worse washing up a pint glass that popped out with my hand in it... I've still got 0 feeling in the outside of my right little finger because I severed the nerve... should I sue the glass manufacturer?
Technically they never promised a referendum if it was ratified. They only promised a referendum if it could be effectual, and now the only way to drop out of the Lisbon treaty is to drop out of Europe altogether, which would be economic suicide IMO.
If you haven't noticed, the UK is horribly in debt. The ID card fiasco can be dropped pretty easily - there is nothing really dependant upon it, and everyone's realised that it won't solve any problems. I can see the Conservatives dropping it.
More of a problem is initiatives like the NHS database which don't get into the headlines as much, which has cost, thus far, at least six billion. To put that in perspective, that is 100 pound out of every single UK resident's pocket. Try a poll on that, and see whether it's worth 100 quid to the average person.
My main point here - Claiming those who vote lib dem are tentative is patently stupid. Have you even looked at any of the policies? I'll vote lib dem because they'll reduce my taxes, and push proportional representation. I earn not too much, and I estimate about 50% of what I earn goes to the government. I use hardly any government services (apart from the obvious, such as roads). Anyone who has a kid gets child tax credit, which I should not pay for. I am paying way more in tax as a proportion of my income than those earning 10 times what I do, and the lib dems are going to sort some of that out.
Not all dogs are registered - to be honest I didn't even know of this database. Unless they actually test clandestinely (perhaps at the vet's), none of the dogs I know are on the database. There have been recent proposals however about compulsary insurance for dogs, which fortunately seem to be not being put through because of their unpopularity and the coming election. Why the fuck they needed the dog's DNA anyway, is confusing. From the BBC:
Johnson was arrested as he fled from the scene of the murder in Larkhall Park bare-chested and covered in blood.
New technology, used for the first time, proved by a billion-to-one probability that some of the blood came from his pit bull-mastiff crossbreed dog, Tyson, which had been knifed during the attack.
The rest was shown to come from the teenage murder victim.
FFS, it doesn't take Poirot + CSI to figure this one out, does it?
Tell them to use the regular account and call you when the admin uac account pops up.
Wait... seriously? This may work if you're supporting a couple of people who never install new hardware (cameras, printers, satnavs, every last electronic device), but I do not want to be rung at all hours of the day with a relative asking if it's ok to install their new gadget. Not to mention upgrading drivers, etc.
Admittedly your post may not have been a troll, but it was hugely misguided. To be honest, you could have posted it to _anyone_, no matter what their antivirus protection. No one knows of viruses they have that they don't know of, obviously. If you'd have posted information about how the OP was at risk because of his behaviour, it might have been useful.
As is, your post is essentially meaningless.
I'm basically in the same boat as you. I never run anything I don't actively go out and get. This simple rule has kept me virus free for 10 years, running win2k and Vista in the last couple of years, no antivirus or firewall (most of the time)
I realise anyone with any kind of technical nouce could probably hack my machine, but I've been surfing and downloading and using the internet for that long, and have had no deleterious effects. I did get a virus on my win2k box about 10 years ago (I think it was actually from a file from a friend, but it's been that long that I don't remember), it corrupted a few files and was pretty easily removed - a couple of hours. IIRC, I did have antivirus active scanning on at the time. I have saved hours and hours by not dealing with antivirus at all since.
Basically, my advice to people who are relatively savvy is not to bother with antivirus. Once antivirus detects anything, it's generally too late. AV can be useful for people who have _no_ clue, but they're bound to get infected anyway sooner or later.
You have missed something. There's plenty of available information on time travel in the dark side of the web, or at least there will be in 6 months time.
_Anyone_ can create a whole universe from scratch. It is easy as hell. Making it interesting and coherent is the main challenge. A universe that is either interesting or coherent is pretty useless. By the standards of its time, Star Wars was astonishingly interesting, and relatively coherent (though the latter has dwindled with subsequent releases). LoTR has brilliant coherency, and is by popular opinion interesting too (though I can't generally see the attraction).
DOS was however the main PC gaming O/S for a long time after, purely because everything loaded on top of it used more conventional memory. I remember completely ignoring all releases of windows, because all major games just required DOS.
This might sound like a dangerous situation, but just as I don't think content providers should be able to lock up their content indefinitely behind a purely legal shield, neither do I think society has a right to go "thought police" on everyone and somehow require that we all hand over every idea or concrete work we conceive of in some open format. That's far too invasive an idea to be ethical, and far too broad a measure to be practical.
Copyright law is essentially a state sanctioned monopoly which tells everyone what they can or cannot publish. The entire system has been the business of the law for ages. If the law did not want to interfere, there would be no copyright law.
In short, if someone is willing to share a work, but only on their terms and with the ability to enforce those terms in practice, I don't see what business the law has telling them they can't.
The terms used to share the work are enforced by the governemnt. The government already has granted a publisher privileges by protecting the work with copyright laws. These are not a god given right, and if a publisher wants these privileges then they can play by the rules. If a publisher does not want government protection then they need not use the copyright laws. As long as the government is protecting copyright, they have all the right in the world to define terms.
In that regard, there is no law that entitles someone to access a particular work, even after a certain period of time.
Sorry for going out of order. I believe this this is the crux of our difference of opinion. The government places controls on others replicating a publisher's work for the publisher's benefit. Claiming the govenment should not interfere is a little hypocritical when government interference is absolutely necessary for any copyright system.
I am absolutely not proposing a free for all, as you saw in my original post. However, copyright is not an essential human right, it is a privilege granted by the governemnt purely to encourage artistic (or other intellectual pursuits) profiteering. All copyright law is basically governmental interference on behalf of the publisher. Restrictions in copyright law only apply to the publisher when the choose to accept the government sanctione protection.
Mephedrone FTW?
I think you are possibly right about the exclusivity thing - I was actually thinking along the lines you are, but did not come to a firm decision. The trouble with exclusive deals though is that the entire publication could end up a disaster, and the creator would have _no_ recourse for the duration of it. They could sign a percentage deal and then the publisher could backtrack, leaving the author in limbo. If exclusive deals would work, they could only be very short. Personally I'd be wary of anything over one year.
Perhaps limited secondary copyright could be passed on to dependants, I would definitely argue against primary copyright being so. Birthrights should not be encouraged generally, IMO.
DRM does not work, at the moment. All it does is inconvenience legitimate users. It does not touch "pirates".
I'm slightly worried about the extent of DRM. _IF_ (and you can see it's a big if) effective DRM does come to pass, media corporations will effectively be able to bypass the law, allowing only who they want to use their products, irrespective of copyrights or anything else. Copyright law would be irrelevant in that case because the only way to use their products would be to ascribe to their DRM. This could even happen with our current laws, although we will not see it for a hundred years or so because of the absurd copyrights. Shortening copyright would speed this process.
Sorry to reply to my own post, and completely O/T still, but :
Official US Guidelines advise a maximum of 40g refined sugar for every 2000 calories consumed. This equates to 8 percent of calories.
This is a decent example, though not satisfied with it being just milk, they manage to cram 76g of sugar in there too. That's about 1/6 of the cup.
Joe sixpack is not going to right click, and send to the website the cut and paste.
This solution is not a solution. Those who know about annoying popups have already blocked them. Those who do not know about preventing annoying popups are unlikely to right click, grab the route, and email it off to the site owner. It would effect basically nothing.
I agree with you to some degree, but the copyright system currently is completely broken. Here's what I propose :
Copyright is non-transferrable. The creator _cannot_ sign away their copyright.
- Copyright lasts for about 10 years.
- Exclusive licenses are illegal. The copyright holder must be able to license to who they want, whenever they want.
- Secondary copyright lasts for 50 years. Secondary copyright entitles the copyright holder to around 15% of the sale value of anything of theirs sold between the end of primary copyright and 50 years. (This is to prevent publishers and music labels profiteering off work by just publishing everything 10 years old, and nothing coming to the creator. Note this does not affect free copying of the work).
- Corporations can (obviously) hold copyright, however only for work done by employees actively working for them. Any work created in an Employee's free time is inescapably the employee's.
- All copyright finishes at the death of the creator.
There are issues to be worked out with this system, eg. joint copyrighted works and disputes within the group. More importantly, this may lead to an increase in DRM as corporations seek to protect their content themselves. At least it would without other laws restricting their rights to do so. However, _all_ of the artists and creators would benefit, and society would benefit as a result too.
I'd personally completely ban DRM if I was in power, but I'd make distribution of copyrighted works criminal (with a large minimum threshold amount, and/or a profit clause). I'd make software distributors legally obliged to provide interoperability (I know that's vague, I haven't pinned it down yet). I'd also require any software copyright holder to release source code after the 10 year primary copyright is up. We can all dream, right?
Like I said, I am _sure_ this kind of system, with loads of tweaks probably, would work. The current system is dead in the water, and is restricting artistic progress.
Sounds like Wacky Races to me...
ps. Whoooosh.
At high speeds, steering without power assistance should be easy. It's only really at low speeds that power assistance is needed. Nearly all modern power assisted steering systems assist a lot less at high speeds than low speeds.
I drive over 8 hours most days, mostly at a constant speed. I do not want leg cramps purely because someone on the internet tells me cruise control is a bad idea. I hate people who fluctuate their speed when I'm trying to overtake them in a truck, which IMO is far more problematic than cruise control.
As an aside, I did once check what putting cruise control would do if I engaged it in neutral in my manual truck... more stupid than I thought, it just kept revving up to try and maintain speed. I did suspect it might, though, so I was ready to cancel it.
I don't own a license, or a TV, and they've been fine with it (I do however use some BBC services, as I described here). They sent a man around, and he asked if I had a TV, I said no, and he said OK. Haven't heard from them since. I know there are horror stories about them being complete arseholes, but it doesn't always happen.
That's why some people here in the UK occasionally get pissed off with the BBC's spending and operations; we're all directly funding them, by law.
I'm not, I don't have a TV. I do listen to the radio about 8 hours a day (almost exclusively BBC, Radio 1, 4, and 5). I also use the BBC website loads, it's the only place I go for mainstream news. I also, and here's the really backwards bit, watch quite a lot of the BBC's output by using BBC iPlayer on my computer. And I don't have to pay anything for any of it.
I realise I am freeloading off of people who do have to pay the license fee, but radio listeners have been doing this for years. I'm also _far_ from rich, and any expense I need to justify, otherwise I'm broke. I pay 15 quid a month for mobile broadband, 15gb d/l a month, runs about 3mb/s (comparable to the crappy ADSL we have around here), pay less than that for my mobile, and don't pay for a landline.
Note : you are not however allowed to watch anything on the iplayer that is currently being broadcast, and a select few programs are not available (most importantly for me, MOTD). I do not know the rules if you download something, then accidently play it at exactly the same time as it is being repeated later. :P
Unfortunately, people who drive without insurance etc just find a car the same as theirs and copy the numberplate. Which means that all speeding tickets, parking fines, congestion charges etc go to the unfortunate owner of the original car. This is a growing problem, an ANPR is compounding it.
We've got the same war in the UK. I used to use cocaine regularly, then I got caught. I cannot afford to get caught again. Now I use mephedrone, which is way harder on the body, and is way harder to regulate adminstration, and is 100% legal. I know I don't need to use drugs, but I enjoy them, and it's my fucking choice. The law is currently forcing me to use something that has worse side effects, purely because the law hasn't caught up yet. When mephedrone is made illegal (and I have no doubt it will be), I will move on to something else I have little knowledge of.
Banning stuff does not work. There are an estimated 1 million regular cocaine users in the UK, and I wish I was one of them.
The number of people in a household is usually a half? No wonder they use less water and power then!