Will America's Favorite Technology Go Dark?

Ant wrote to mention that MSNBC is reporting on the upcoming proposed digital television switchover planned for the end of 2006. From the article: "That's the date Congress targeted, a decade ago, for the end of analog television broadcasting and a full cutover to a digital format. If enforced, that means that overnight, somewhere around 70 million television sets now connected to rabbit ears or roof-top antennas will suddenly and forever go blank, unless their owners purchase a special converter box. Back when the legislation was written, New Year's Eve 2006 probably looked as safely distant as the dark side of the moon. But now that date is right around the corner and Congress and the FCC are struggling mightily to figure out what to do."

Comments

As usual

[bogaboga]

Unfortunately, this kind us situation is Business as Usual in American policies! Who does not know about illegal immigtation, and the procrastination our government is engaged in when it comes to outsourcing American jobs? I am afraid that very soon, we as Americans, will have no industial base and that is when our politicians will come to their senses.

Heck, even the problems the shuttle is having now were outlined more than seven years ago and because it was business as usual, nothing was done till lives were lost!

It's sad that the mighty USA now relies on a country with a "third world" economy to put it's very intelligent sceintists into orbit. (These are economist's words).

Re:A suggestion maybe

[droptone]

The book was published posthumously in tree form but there are still .pdf and .ps available on the web.

I haven't read this book, but I doubt that the world would be much better off if they learned the proper implementation of Bayes' theorem...just teach them not to use logical fallacies, PLEASE!

Oh yeah, PDF and PS links.

Re:A suggestion maybe

[DrJimbo]

haven't read this book, but I doubt that the world would be much better off if they learned the proper implementation of Bayes' theorem...just teach them not to use logical fallacies, PLEASE!

The book is about a lot more than just Bayes theorem. Jaynes starts out with a list of basic desiderata for a plausible reasoner:

• (I) Degrees of plausibility are represented by real numbers.
• (II) Qualitative correspondence with common sense.
• (IIIa) If a conclusion can be reasoned out in more than one way, then every possible way must lead to the same result.
• (IIIb) The [reasoner] takes into account all of the evidence it has relevant to a question.
• (IIIc) The [reasoner] always represents equivalent states of knowlege by equivalent plausibility assignments.

He then shows that these desiderata lead to a unique set of quantitative rules for plausible reasoning.

But the part I find most interesting is the comment sections at the end of each chapter. For example, after listing his desiderata, his comments begin:

As politicians, advertisers, salesmen, and propagandists for various political, economic, moral, religious, psychic, envrionmental, dietary, and artistic doctrinaire positions know only too well, fallible human minds are easily tricked, by clever verbiage, into committing violations of the above desiderata. We shall try to ensure that they do not suceed with our [reasoner].