Please do not write below the line • Hacker News Board

Re: Please do not write below the line

#201

Post by throwup238 » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:20 PM UTC

masfuerte wrote: post #114

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #61

The most baffling thing here is how the hell did the author get the organisation to respond , on topic, multiple times? In my experience conversing with various entities that are supposed to provide customer support, absolutely anything outside of an extremely narrow set of vetted topics with prepared answers and especially anything technical gets ignored and receives an irrelevant response at best.

I saw another example the other day of how things used to work. If you wrote to the UK government in the 1980s to ask (or complain) about their policy towards apartheid South Africa you received a personal reply addressing your points in the context of the government's policy [1]. Presumably, letters to other departments were handled similarly. I've corresponded with the civil service a few times recently and the ser…

Vote Tory 2029! They’ll fix it this time around, they promises.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#202

Post by satisfice » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:24 PM UTC

The people at the BBC have failed the Turing test.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#203

Post by Stevvo » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:24 PM UTC

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

It's equally hilarious and sobering travelling to the US as European, turning on a TV and finding more advertising than programming.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#204

Post by bigiain » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:29 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #178

cal85 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On-topic? Every reply seemed evasive to me. (Regarding how he got them to reply at all, this is required by law of public authorities.)

Hilarious that every time, they responded in a way that was technically on-topic, but totally ignoring the actual questions being asked. Like someone found one word in OP's question, then mindlessly recited a random form response associated with that word.

A Small Language Model...

Re: Please do not write below the line

#205

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:33 PM UTC

TheRealPomax wrote: post #171

Kwpolska wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much taxpayer money is wasted on the accounting, the enforcement, and the scary-sounding letters? Wouldn’t it be better if the government just gave taxpayer money to the BBC directly?

You mean "how much money is given to people to do those things"? Because the money doesn't magically disappear in the pockets of "big beeb", all those tasks are performed by people who get paid for that, drawing an income and then spending the money they earned by economically participating in society. There is no money being wasted. Although it might certainly be a case of paper being wasted.

All the money being spent on enforcement is being wasted, if the alternative is just to raise general taxes by the same amount and fund it from that.

So yes, of course there is absolutely money being wasted in this comparison.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#206

Post by ozzmotik » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:35 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #178

cal85 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On-topic? Every reply seemed evasive to me. (Regarding how he got them to reply at all, this is required by law of public authorities.)

Hilarious that every time, they responded in a way that was technically on-topic, but totally ignoring the actual questions being asked. Like someone found one word in OP's question, then mindlessly recited a random form response associated with that word.

this is, legitimately and without any exaggeration whatsoever, almost exactly how nearly everyone I speak to IRL as a homeless individual interacts with me. There are a few here and there that absolutely do make an attempt to have real discourse and actually discuss in context, but by an overwhelming majority, most of them just take the (to borrow from a response) SLM approach.

life is exhausting sometimes

Re: Please do not write below the line

#207

Post by bigiain » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:43 PM UTC

Kwpolska wrote: post #195

TheRealPomax wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean "how much money is given to people to do those things"? Because the money doesn't magically disappear in the pockets of "big beeb", all those tasks are performed by people who get paid for that, drawing an income and then spending the money they earned by economically participating in society. There is no money being wasted. Although it might certainly be a case of paper being wasted.

The UK government/BBC is happy to give £91m/year to Crapita to administer the TV License [0], and there are a bunch of other contractors [1]. Almost 100 million pounds wasted that could be spent on programming, but instead go to private businesses. Instead, the UK government could just directly fund the BBC out of taxes. Even if it might require a small increase of the tax rate, they could save on the enforcement and…

> Almost 100 million pounds wasted that could be spent on programming

That's kinda assuming that everybody would continue to pay the license fee if the enforcement was stopped.

I have no clue how much revenue the TV licenses generate, or whether 100 million for administration and enforcement is a reasonable number. It feels unlikely to me?

Google google google:

  In 2021, there were 24.8 million households in England
  The TV licence fee is currently £159 a year

So there'd be 4,000 million or so in revenue if every household paid for the license (more including the rest of the UK). I _guess_ maybe 2.5% isn't a unreasoable number for administration and enforcementment? It's better that, say, Apple taking 30%...

Re: Please do not write below the line

#208

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:45 PM UTC

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #156

eastbound wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France you pay the copyright infringement tax on every hard drive / SSD / storage you purchase. But it’s still forbidden to pirate movies.

It is not "copyright infringement" tax. It's called a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy and it's a rather common thing, at least in all of Europe.

Seems close enough. The article even discusses how it is "often considered a compensation for illegal file sharing". And even if it's common, that doesn't make it any less unfair. (Indeed, the longest section of the article is titled "Questions on fairness".)

Re: Please do not write below the line

#209

Post by remram » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:48 PM UTC

What does the full letter look like? They only posted a picture of the Santander one.

Is there really no space for writing in, anywhere on that letter, above the line?

Re: Please do not write below the line

#210

Post by ForOldHack » Mon, Oct 21, 2024, 11:48 PM UTC

grogenaut wrote: post #160

duxup wrote: post #95

I worked for an old company that had a lot of old processes and paperwork. Many bits of paperwork had a "do not write below the line" type areas. I always wrote something ... nothing ever happened. I once hand delivered some paperwork (I was running late) to HR rather than using the inter office mail service. I asked them about it, they told me "Oh you must be Mathew..." I was HR famous. They didn't actually mind, th…

My favorite thing when moving at the big co that owns my co is that they give you these stickers for desk items to show up... whatever you put the sticker on comes along to be by the desk. WHATEVER YOU PUT IT ON. The movers just do what the stickers said. One coworker got every white board in the area. Another got a sandwich and some empty coke cans. Another got a sofa and an empty trash bag. The Machine Works.

The company I got acquired had a huge software library. On the way out on the last day at the old company, I put my cube number on every box that had software in it. It all went to my new cube, and when ever someone asked for an old manual, I would fish it out put their name on it and deliver it surriptishouly the next morning It took more than a year for the product manager to figure it all out, and by that time, they figured that all the software was too old. So ... I simply asked if I could have it all. They said o.k. I took home a box every day for more than a month, reg cards and license keys included. I sold every scrap.

Unexpectly a book I always wanted to read, which was written by a VP, he said he was coming by, so I had him autograph it. His note "please take it easy on them." Sold for more than $200.

The Machine Works, and mostly not the way it was intended. Sorry.