Sshhh, don't tell them.

What a good idea. Infrequent users may not be the largest source of income, but something is better than nothing, and a few bucks falls into impulse purchasing where you don't even need to think to spend it, so people will spend if they want that service immediately. Happy customers are also good at returning.

Oh no man, that shit so bad you get it for free...

Mandatory what? It's not mandatory. If you don't own a TV and don't stream Live shows on iPlayer (BBC's streaming service), you don't need a TV license. Also as far as I know, you don't need a radio license. Checked wikipedia on that, abolished in 1971 for radios. If you watch BBC iPlayer tv post-broadcast time, you don't need a license. Anyway, I'll take the BBC any day over most American ad-infested overpriced channels.

I don't know about you but my clutch is where my left foot is. Touching the clutch is part of driving the vehicle over here. Press clutch to disengage gearbox. Everyone who drives a manual over here knows that.

Don't go to Europe then.

This is nothing new, see London Congestion Charge false fines.

Londoner then?

If a vehicle is expecting to be towing something, because the owner has gone and had a tow bar fitted (they don't generally come as standard in the UK iirc unless it's a goods vehicle anyway), or works where the vehicle will need to be towing something then the owner has usually gone out and got a third plate for affixing to the back of the towed thing. It's trivial to go and get a third plate for the purposes of towing something, if you have a tow bar, you know you may be towing in the future, you get a plate. This is a somewhat non-issue.

How are the Samsungs for noise? I found the Caviars nice and quiet, which is good with a few of them near by. As long as they're not Barracuda loud, at least.

Annoyingly I've just had 2 AAKS drives of slightly different ages die on me this week, though they have had good mileage of consistent usage for 4 years. I prefer them to my old Barracudas, which rattled away like a screw in a tin can. Annoyingly prices are still uncomfortably steep for me to replace them so I'll have to hope the two I have left will keep going. I don't see why they'd all die at the same time, but who knows.

Yeah I think we call them Banks, and they don't take a cut. The Post Office will convert your change too for free. Those machines exist but since there's more Post Offices than auto-sorter machines that steal 10%, I think people go to the Post Office instead.

It's possible that they are non-consumer because they can't be produced at the same volume as demanded by a consumer-space product, so a production speed or cost issue. Perhaps they are technologically inferior to a typical phone screen in terms of fill rate and response times relative to their cost (i.e. not worth getting something like that for its cost compared to a samsung screen). They may be excellent screens for what they are designed for, but may not have so much of a product market here, where battery life gains are less critical and utility/features/coolness beats readability for average joe.

The thing is, if IBM patents the planet, eventually the whole system will implode and they'll lose value. So having a big pile of patents will be worthless and all the money thrown at them, as well as fighting them is gone with no value. I don't think we're quite as critical mass yet, but I expect it will happen eventually. The destruction of the patent/copyright system I'd think would be the next global commercial crisis after this financial one, I hope. But that's just me being a cynic.