You need to pay to watch British TV live, period.

Argh, now I'm completely paranoid that the verification thing I did the other day was phishing. I made a new gmail and when my friend tried to log in (it's planned to be a shared account) he emailed me later saying it was locking him out or something. And so I went in and did...something. But don't remember if it autodirected me there or I clicked. Grrr.

In the States, some of your tax money goes to PBS, who produces and broadcasts public television.

The UK's TV license fee simply cuts the government out of the equation and gives the money directly to the BBC.

(Which isn't to say that there isn't government oversight, fuckyouverymuchDavidCameronIdidn'twantaraisethisyearanyway, but the idea is the same - public television is owned by the people, therefore the people pay for it to exist.)

meara, if you're worried, then change the password and tell your friend.

I'm perfectly happy to have my tax money go to PBS. I'd be happy to pay MORE if they could stop the pledge drives.

The way things are going the government will be running pledge drives soon. "At the $1,000 dollar level we plant a tree ripped out of a national park in your yard."

"At the $1 million level we give you anything you want" ... oops! already in place!

"At the $1,000 dollar level we plant a tree ripped out of a national park in your yard."

You can get Misha Collins to do that for free, but the tree will be dead.

I'm having connecting to the internet issues, and I don't know where to go from here.

This morning the internet connection on desktop was working fine. I have two lines and it was connected to one that has been working. The other line was out. The ATT guy came and redid some wiring in the box to fix that line. Right after he started work, my internet connection went out, but I figured it was just because he was testing both lines. He left and I realized it was still out. He says nothing he did could have affected the connection.

I did several rounds of turning everything on and off and then deleting and setting up new connections and went through a round of testing and troubleshooting with a person in India.

The problem may not be in the line at all, though. (Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.) The modem shows a lighted DSL connection, and more to the point, I'm on the internet now with my netbook, using the modem and that phone line. That seems to indicate it's something in the computer, but I don't know how to confirm that or what to do next.

Update: Fixed! I was starting to work my way through an internet suggestion and found that the first step, which enabled local area connection, fixed it. It worked before without that. Sometimes I think computers just need attention. Perhaps the computer didn't realize that I had just bought it a new monitor and router.

More info on the Comcast/Netflix thing I posted the other day:

Will Comcast Destroy Net Neutrality?

The situation is actually complicated, and it's not clear that Comcast is in the wrong. An interesting read.