Yes, everything is money that could have spent elsewhere.
If only you were in charge.
Which you aren't.
Possibly because no one cares what you want to spend the money on and you haven't convinced them to. I'm glad. I paid good money for a TV which would have stopped working after this transition and the fact that the government used part of the proceeds from selling off that spectrum on a program that provided me the money to retrofit my TV to work with the new system is appropriate to me.
You are just another example that people will find reasons to bitch about anything, except themselves of course.
And how, again, is attempting to improve the functionality of the equipment somehow invalidating his claim to the money?
Are all consumers eligible for the coupon program?
Yes, but supplies are limited. There are 22.25 million coupons available to all U.S. households. Once those coupons have been used, there are an additional 11.25 million coupons available only to households that solely receive their TV broadcasts over-the-air using an antenna. Households with TVs connected to cable, satellite or other pay TV service are not eligible for this second batch of coupons. Consumers can apply for coupons until March 31, 2009, or until the funds are exhausted.
No, and specificly no if you are being tried as an adult. And even more no if you are convicted of something that (such as a sexual offense) which puts you on an exclusionary list.
Cases can be ordered sealed, or expunged, on reaching majority, but it isn't always automatic and given the folk doing this seem to have a hard on for making an example of these children to 'teach the others a lesson', I doubt any quarter will be given to the defendants unless the judge themselves finds this as ludicrious as I do.
Like credit card companies, the wireless companies write into their contract the ability to 'revise' terms as they deem necessary. As long as they provide you a copy of the updated terms and conditions with a note along the lines of "if you don't contact us by such and such a date to tell us you reject these changes, they are in effect".
In theory, you should be able to contact them and tell them you reject the changes, in which case you are still on your old contract and/or they negotiate a different set of changes for you. In practice, they also tell you refusal to accept the changes will result in the termination of your account. Since the termination is their decision rather than yours, they aren't suppose to be able to levee any 'early cancelation' fees.
By not doing it. I'm the devils advocate here, not a proponent. But they don't bother proving that point because it is assumed that if you are aroused by 'child porn' that makes you far more likely to be a pedophile.
Kind of like how back in the Cold War era they adopted the requirement for school children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and altered it to include a reference to "One Nation under God" because it was suppose to keep the 'godless communists' away.
There is no logic behind the argument, its pure emotion and fundamentalism.
Actually the argument most often used against child porn is that it 'encourages the abuse of children', this often allows 'them' to go after even non-photographic items such as drawings or computer renderings.
Similar to how regular porn is gone after not because it was 'non consensual' but because it 'encourages immoral behavior'.
That is the only thing the prosecution needs to prove.
What was the intent of the photo? It was a photo between 'lovers'. I don't think it'd be hard for them to prove the intent was salacious.
And once they do that the deed is done. It could be a picture of your fat Uncle Eddie in a mouse suit when he was 8, it doesn't matter. It's considered child porn.
The outrage here is that the people being charged are also the subjects of the photos. Charging a minor with creating child porn when taking pictures of themselves is all sorts of "stupid". Considering the photos themselves pornographic isn't.
I can't, in my wildest imagination, imagine a stupider response to the idea that three children are being charged with the offense of child porngraphy, for pictures of themselves and three others for receiving them, then "Maybe they shouldn't have been using their cell phones in class."
Do you have any fucking idea what just the fact that they've been charged will do to their lives? How many jobs are now barred to them just because this charge will be on their records? Much less the complete ruination of their life if they are found guilty?
This is BARELY above Taliban 'bury a girl in the sand and throw stones at her head till she's dead because she was raped by someone' level stupidity.
If that's what networking means to you, that's why you are discounting it. Networking is maintaining a social network. Period. With all that entails. If you have 'poor' networking then yes, all it is is socializing with a bunch of people an hour at a time for the sole purpose of getting 'something'. Be it a job or not.
No, networking is not the "ticket to success" in an IT career, but it is the fare. You can be capable of building your own helpdesk, write your own OS for breakfast, and whistle in Bluetooth (no, I don't have any idea how) but if no one wants you in the building you'll never get work.
Any job, ANY JOB, involves interaction with human beings. And as such, if you want to keep your job, you must be willing to put at least a minimum amount of effort in keeping that interaction cordial.
Networking doesn't enable you to do the job, it enables you to GET that job and KEEP it when other individual of seemingly comparable qualifications (to the outsider making the decision) are available.
With respect, while I'm sure both of those places had wonderful engineering programs, they weren't colleges dedicated towards engineering.
When I said it was an engineering college, I really meant it. That, I assume, was the major contributing factor to the attitude.
What always amused me was how many people I saw trying to get a liberal arts degree there. It wasn't that liberal arts wasn't worth it, but UMR (as it was named while I was there) had a minimum number of engineering courses you had to take to enroll, and often enough the 'liberal arts' offerings were sparse enough that between the required courses and attempting to "Tetris" your way to required number of credits in your major, you'd be stuck there for six to eight years. It was like these folk were masochists.
And as far as the simularities in jobs, yes. That's one of the reasons why I was so drawned towards EE. If you get right down to it, EE is where CS came from.
To be honest, EE was one of the things I was interested in early on in life. However I made the mistake of going to an engineering college for my CS degree and after spending four years putting up with the condescending attitudes of the "real engineers" (students and staff) towards CS, I resolved to never pursue any sort of career choice that would involve having to work with "that crowd" again.
Honestly, I thought 'jocks' in high school had egos but they had nothing on these folk.
Which, is probably a sad thing. I imagine taken out of the "Huah! We're number one cause we can do maths!" atmosphere that the university fostered, most of them would have probably turned out to be passable humans.
As someone who migrated away from a direct IT job to an HR job that is tangentially IT related, allow me to say that I am far far happier now than when I was doing the death march for people who thought of their IT folk as "geeks" who lived for abuse and being taken advantage of.
And my mind still gets a work out, and I still get to keep my hand in the water. And, as an extra bonus, when I go home at night. I can actually enjoy tinkering on my own projects instead of feeling as if I'm just bringing 'work' home with me.
Yes, right now is a bad time to jump for some people. On the other hand, I also realize that as a group, those of us drawn to IT often wait too long before jumping. Don't wait for the perfect moment. Pick one and make it 'perfect'.
I'm just saying I think it's the height of arrogance to say to tell a bunch of people, 'Screw you. We gave you warning and the train's leaving now.'
And unfortunately, regardless of whether it's arrogance or just frustration with a process that should have happened years ago, it's something that needs to happen.
Will folk get caught out? Yes. Of course they will. There will be much nashing of teeth. There will be tearing of hair. Wailing and tears. And nothing, NOTHING, is going to prevent that. Not delaying the transition, not refunding the coupon program, not doing it on schedule.
And that is because there are always going to be people who don't do anything, for whatever reason, till they are forced to.
Is it arrogant of me to say "screw them?" Damn right. But it's also arrogant to say "You can't do this because WE haven't budged." And at the end of the day, moving forward is the only option that actually offers a solution.
The people who break and care, will get fixed (one way or another) and the ones that don't will stew and complain.
Yes, people depend on their TV for many things, but it's not oxygen. It's not water. It's not even electricty. They still have raido for emergency broadcasts. They still have life for entertainment and each other for companionship. Their phones will still work, their cars will still work. Their neighbors will still talk to them. It will NOT be the end of the world.
And like I said, it's going to happen. They are going to break. So break them, and stop holding the rest of the world back by trying to get 100% adoption before you start.
It is not true that the problems out there now are with "the select group of people who still use VCR's, 8-Tracks, and still haven't bothered to get a converter box" - as a matter of choice.
The population is almost entirely elderly, rural and with no technical skills. These folks rely on us for their entertainment and information, and are utterly lost when it comes to understanding how to hook up a box, or you do after or what you do when it doesn't work.
And here is my problem. When will these people upgrade? Hmm? They've had a year to do it. They've had ad campaigns up the wazoo. When? Will they magicly up and gain sentience a year from now? Two?
Shall we wait till all old people are dead? Institute a Logan's Run scenario?
The pure fact of the matter is, most of these people won't even bother to do crap till their TV stops working.
And as far as the "I'm old, I can't use this" arguement, you get only so far with that. Because working with my parents, grand parents, and other assorted "family" on their computers, VCR's, and other 'hi tech' devices what I've learned is that while 99% of them claim "I can't do this, I'm just a..." what they really mean is "I don't want to do this, why can't you just give me a big red Staples button that does everything for me."
All of the ones who aren't already on assisted living and having some poor under paid girl do everything for them have been perfectly capable of following the simple instructions needed to hook a converter box into their tv. This isn't rocket science. It isn't even high school science.
Example: we run our CBS in high def and our Fox in standard, and even then, on Sundays when there is a football game on both stations we can get digital artifacting because there isn't enough bandwidth to fit everything cleanly.
And how, again, did you accomplish this feat before digital? Is the problem that there isn't enough bandwidth or is the problem that your particular station decided to cut it's costs in half by dropping a license and combining two?
That's always been an issue, small stations cut corners to make the budget. Large stations leverage their money to stay large.
Where I live there are two stations that already have sub-channels. One broadcasts a 24 hour weather program on it's single sub-channel and the other is PBS which has four stations, the main, a kids, a DIY, and one I haven't quite figured out the theme of.
With respect, I point out that while you had reasons why you didn't get a box, they aren't: "OMG, it was impossible", instead they are: "OMG, it was inconvenient". It wasn't because you couldn't afford it, it was because you begrudged spending money on it. And probably most importantly, it was because you said "Meh, I don't really care today".
And I would posit the majority of the people who are complaining are not the "I can't afford it" group, it's the "It's moderately inconvenient of me to get up and actually do anything" group.
And while I understand your reasons, I don't exactly have sympathy or a desire to delay things simply because a group of people went "Meh."
That's funny, I see having to spend $40 just so that the government could raise $20bil to shift spectrum from the "public good" into the private possession of AT&T and Verizon as a legitimate claim of injury, and successfully using the $40 coupon as mitigating that injury.
And the bolded part of your statement there is why I'll always have exactly zero sympathy for your side of this arguement. Open your eyes, it's a year before 2010 and right now the majority of our OTA broadcasting is done using essentially the same methods from the 1950's!
The conversion to digital broadcasting isn't JUST about raising money by selling the unused portions of the spectrum.
It's about bringing our nation back up to speed. And it wouldn't have happened any other way, because the people who have had to implement it had absolutely no incentive to bring it about any more than Bell had any incentive to introduce cell phones. They had their monopoly and no reason to stir out of it.
Not every evolution of technology is going to be a slow fade away from the old to the new. Sometimes you actually have to just set a date and do it.
And sometimes, the government isn't going to carry you the whole way just because you are too tired yelling at kids to get off your lawn. Again, unless you are on charity, Social Security, or a pension as your only means of income, you've had a year to save up $40. It isn't that hard, and it isn't that much.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say that no one could get a converter box because they were always sold out. Either a good number of people got a box, thus causing them to be sold out. Or no one got boxes.
There were people who weren't ABLE to get a box in the 90-day period of time that their coupon was good for, there were people who GOT a box, and there were people who didn't TRY to get a box.
Of the three, only the first have ANY claim of injury here. And of those people, ONLY the ones who can legitimately say "I can't afford a $40 box" have my sympathy. I don't see that as an overwhelming majority. Nor, given that the local churches and other charity organizations are running drives to get boxes into those homes too, do I really see THAT as an issue.
It's two fucking DVD's man. TWO. Four if the only ones you buy are those crappy $9.99 ones they toss in the bargain bin because no one really wants to see Mike Myers dressed up as a furry and slaughtering childhood memories. Unless you are on charity, Social Security, or a pension, you can afford it. And if you are, then I guarantee you there is someone out there who would love to put one in your hands.
If you don't care what Verizon and AT&T are going to do with the spectrum once its free, then the solution to all of these problems was to do what the broadcasters and the viewers wanted in the first place: Nothing.
Correction: What you really meant was "what the broadcasters wanted in the first place: Nothing.
Because I can damn well tell you that I've wanted them to go digital since the change was first suggested the first time around and contrary to your assumption, I and many others like me are viewers.
What you may have tried to mean was "what the broadcasters and the select group of people who still use VCR's, 8-Tracks, and still haven't bothered to get a converter box wanted". Which would also be true. And fuck them too.
The spectrum is a public good. It should be used in the most effective way possible. Squatting on it with your 1940's analog technology because you don't want to spend the money on upgrading your equipment is ridiculous.
The fact that the switch to digital is going to be able to smoosh ALL of the current broadcasters into a smaller spectrum, and they'll still be able to provide more channels at better resolution and quality should be telling you something.
What are AT&T and Verizon going to do with their blocks? I don't care. Not because it's not important, but because it's not relevant to this discussion. They aren't the ones who are impeding the switch. They aren't the ones who drug their feet at every step in this conversion and who are now doing their best to whip up a grass roots scare campaign in a last minute effort to kill the project off. That's the broadcasters.
And "responsibility that it goes smoothly"? What sort of kool-aid are you drinking over there? There hasn't be one change of this nature at this scale that has ever gone 'smoothly'. What the government has a responsibility to do is make sure the public resources we've entrusted them with the stewardship over are being used responsibly and effectively. Not hand hold a bunch of people who aren't going to give a shit ever, until the day everything actually stops working.
Fuck what Verizon and AT&T are doing with their chunk of it, I just want the OTA folk to start using their chunks correctly. Right now I've got a TV in my room that half works digital (because everyone is broadcasting at something like 10% of their full power to avoid interference with analog signals) and half works analog (because not all the stations have their digital and analog towers in the same location and I've moved the anntena to attempt to get the best digital reception).
Just fucking do it already. It was suppose to happen years ago but people kept saying "we aren't ready!".
Most of the people who haven't upgraded, won't unless it actually breaks. The longer and more drawn out we make this already extremely overdue process, the more painful it's going to be.
Chuck Norris doesn't need cross hairs. He spits the bullet and if the target knows what's good for it, it makes sure it's in the path. If it doesn't, well Chuck has more painfull methods of ensuring a "one shot, one kill" ratio.
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Yes, everything is money that could have spent elsewhere.
If only you were in charge.
Which you aren't.
Possibly because no one cares what you want to spend the money on and you haven't convinced them to. I'm glad. I paid good money for a TV which would have stopped working after this transition and the fact that the government used part of the proceeds from selling off that spectrum on a program that provided me the money to retrofit my TV to work with the new system is appropriate to me.
You are just another example that people will find reasons to bitch about anything, except themselves of course.
And how, again, is attempting to improve the functionality of the equipment somehow invalidating his claim to the money?
From the governments website itself.
No, and specificly no if you are being tried as an adult. And even more no if you are convicted of something that (such as a sexual offense) which puts you on an exclusionary list.
Cases can be ordered sealed, or expunged, on reaching majority, but it isn't always automatic and given the folk doing this seem to have a hard on for making an example of these children to 'teach the others a lesson', I doubt any quarter will be given to the defendants unless the judge themselves finds this as ludicrious as I do.
Like credit card companies, the wireless companies write into their contract the ability to 'revise' terms as they deem necessary. As long as they provide you a copy of the updated terms and conditions with a note along the lines of "if you don't contact us by such and such a date to tell us you reject these changes, they are in effect".
In theory, you should be able to contact them and tell them you reject the changes, in which case you are still on your old contract and/or they negotiate a different set of changes for you. In practice, they also tell you refusal to accept the changes will result in the termination of your account. Since the termination is their decision rather than yours, they aren't suppose to be able to levee any 'early cancelation' fees.
Not that that stops it from happening.
By not doing it. I'm the devils advocate here, not a proponent. But they don't bother proving that point because it is assumed that if you are aroused by 'child porn' that makes you far more likely to be a pedophile.
Kind of like how back in the Cold War era they adopted the requirement for school children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and altered it to include a reference to "One Nation under God" because it was suppose to keep the 'godless communists' away.
There is no logic behind the argument, its pure emotion and fundamentalism.
Actually the argument most often used against child porn is that it 'encourages the abuse of children', this often allows 'them' to go after even non-photographic items such as drawings or computer renderings.
Similar to how regular porn is gone after not because it was 'non consensual' but because it 'encourages immoral behavior'.
Intent.
That is the only thing the prosecution needs to prove.
What was the intent of the photo? It was a photo between 'lovers'. I don't think it'd be hard for them to prove the intent was salacious.
And once they do that the deed is done. It could be a picture of your fat Uncle Eddie in a mouse suit when he was 8, it doesn't matter. It's considered child porn.
The outrage here is that the people being charged are also the subjects of the photos. Charging a minor with creating child porn when taking pictures of themselves is all sorts of "stupid". Considering the photos themselves pornographic isn't.
I can't, in my wildest imagination, imagine a stupider response to the idea that three children are being charged with the offense of child porngraphy, for pictures of themselves and three others for receiving them, then "Maybe they shouldn't have been using their cell phones in class."
Do you have any fucking idea what just the fact that they've been charged will do to their lives? How many jobs are now barred to them just because this charge will be on their records? Much less the complete ruination of their life if they are found guilty?
This is BARELY above Taliban 'bury a girl in the sand and throw stones at her head till she's dead because she was raped by someone' level stupidity.
True men (which I make no claim of being) build their man cave first, then let the woman build thier poofy "doll house" on top.
If that's what networking means to you, that's why you are discounting it. Networking is maintaining a social network. Period. With all that entails. If you have 'poor' networking then yes, all it is is socializing with a bunch of people an hour at a time for the sole purpose of getting 'something'. Be it a job or not.
No, networking is not the "ticket to success" in an IT career, but it is the fare. You can be capable of building your own helpdesk, write your own OS for breakfast, and whistle in Bluetooth (no, I don't have any idea how) but if no one wants you in the building you'll never get work.
Any job, ANY JOB, involves interaction with human beings. And as such, if you want to keep your job, you must be willing to put at least a minimum amount of effort in keeping that interaction cordial.
Networking doesn't enable you to do the job, it enables you to GET that job and KEEP it when other individual of seemingly comparable qualifications (to the outsider making the decision) are available.
Complete with the "Pwnt by viruses within 10 minutes of booting up".
With respect, while I'm sure both of those places had wonderful engineering programs, they weren't colleges dedicated towards engineering.
When I said it was an engineering college, I really meant it. That, I assume, was the major contributing factor to the attitude.
What always amused me was how many people I saw trying to get a liberal arts degree there. It wasn't that liberal arts wasn't worth it, but UMR (as it was named while I was there) had a minimum number of engineering courses you had to take to enroll, and often enough the 'liberal arts' offerings were sparse enough that between the required courses and attempting to "Tetris" your way to required number of credits in your major, you'd be stuck there for six to eight years. It was like these folk were masochists.
And as far as the simularities in jobs, yes. That's one of the reasons why I was so drawned towards EE. If you get right down to it, EE is where CS came from.
To be honest, EE was one of the things I was interested in early on in life. However I made the mistake of going to an engineering college for my CS degree and after spending four years putting up with the condescending attitudes of the "real engineers" (students and staff) towards CS, I resolved to never pursue any sort of career choice that would involve having to work with "that crowd" again.
Honestly, I thought 'jocks' in high school had egos but they had nothing on these folk.
Which, is probably a sad thing. I imagine taken out of the "Huah! We're number one cause we can do maths!" atmosphere that the university fostered, most of them would have probably turned out to be passable humans.
As someone who migrated away from a direct IT job to an HR job that is tangentially IT related, allow me to say that I am far far happier now than when I was doing the death march for people who thought of their IT folk as "geeks" who lived for abuse and being taken advantage of.
And my mind still gets a work out, and I still get to keep my hand in the water. And, as an extra bonus, when I go home at night. I can actually enjoy tinkering on my own projects instead of feeling as if I'm just bringing 'work' home with me.
Yes, right now is a bad time to jump for some people. On the other hand, I also realize that as a group, those of us drawn to IT often wait too long before jumping. Don't wait for the perfect moment. Pick one and make it 'perfect'.
And unfortunately, regardless of whether it's arrogance or just frustration with a process that should have happened years ago, it's something that needs to happen.
Will folk get caught out? Yes. Of course they will. There will be much nashing of teeth. There will be tearing of hair. Wailing and tears. And nothing, NOTHING, is going to prevent that. Not delaying the transition, not refunding the coupon program, not doing it on schedule.
And that is because there are always going to be people who don't do anything, for whatever reason, till they are forced to.
Is it arrogant of me to say "screw them?" Damn right. But it's also arrogant to say "You can't do this because WE haven't budged." And at the end of the day, moving forward is the only option that actually offers a solution.
The people who break and care, will get fixed (one way or another) and the ones that don't will stew and complain.
Yes, people depend on their TV for many things, but it's not oxygen. It's not water. It's not even electricty. They still have raido for emergency broadcasts. They still have life for entertainment and each other for companionship. Their phones will still work, their cars will still work. Their neighbors will still talk to them. It will NOT be the end of the world.
And like I said, it's going to happen. They are going to break. So break them, and stop holding the rest of the world back by trying to get 100% adoption before you start.
That is highly illogical captain.
And here is my problem. When will these people upgrade? Hmm? They've had a year to do it. They've had ad campaigns up the wazoo. When? Will they magicly up and gain sentience a year from now? Two?
Shall we wait till all old people are dead? Institute a Logan's Run scenario?
The pure fact of the matter is, most of these people won't even bother to do crap till their TV stops working.
And as far as the "I'm old, I can't use this" arguement, you get only so far with that. Because working with my parents, grand parents, and other assorted "family" on their computers, VCR's, and other 'hi tech' devices what I've learned is that while 99% of them claim "I can't do this, I'm just a..." what they really mean is "I don't want to do this, why can't you just give me a big red Staples button that does everything for me."
All of the ones who aren't already on assisted living and having some poor under paid girl do everything for them have been perfectly capable of following the simple instructions needed to hook a converter box into their tv. This isn't rocket science. It isn't even high school science.
And how, again, did you accomplish this feat before digital? Is the problem that there isn't enough bandwidth or is the problem that your particular station decided to cut it's costs in half by dropping a license and combining two?
That's always been an issue, small stations cut corners to make the budget. Large stations leverage their money to stay large.
Where I live there are two stations that already have sub-channels. One broadcasts a 24 hour weather program on it's single sub-channel and the other is PBS which has four stations, the main, a kids, a DIY, and one I haven't quite figured out the theme of.
That's four more stations than with analog.
With respect, I point out that while you had reasons why you didn't get a box, they aren't: "OMG, it was impossible", instead they are: "OMG, it was inconvenient". It wasn't because you couldn't afford it, it was because you begrudged spending money on it. And probably most importantly, it was because you said "Meh, I don't really care today".
And I would posit the majority of the people who are complaining are not the "I can't afford it" group, it's the "It's moderately inconvenient of me to get up and actually do anything" group.
And while I understand your reasons, I don't exactly have sympathy or a desire to delay things simply because a group of people went "Meh."
And the bolded part of your statement there is why I'll always have exactly zero sympathy for your side of this arguement. Open your eyes, it's a year before 2010 and right now the majority of our OTA broadcasting is done using essentially the same methods from the 1950's!
The conversion to digital broadcasting isn't JUST about raising money by selling the unused portions of the spectrum.
It's about bringing our nation back up to speed. And it wouldn't have happened any other way, because the people who have had to implement it had absolutely no incentive to bring it about any more than Bell had any incentive to introduce cell phones. They had their monopoly and no reason to stir out of it.
Not every evolution of technology is going to be a slow fade away from the old to the new. Sometimes you actually have to just set a date and do it.
And sometimes, the government isn't going to carry you the whole way just because you are too tired yelling at kids to get off your lawn. Again, unless you are on charity, Social Security, or a pension as your only means of income, you've had a year to save up $40. It isn't that hard, and it isn't that much.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say that no one could get a converter box because they were always sold out. Either a good number of people got a box, thus causing them to be sold out. Or no one got boxes.
There were people who weren't ABLE to get a box in the 90-day period of time that their coupon was good for, there were people who GOT a box, and there were people who didn't TRY to get a box.
Of the three, only the first have ANY claim of injury here. And of those people, ONLY the ones who can legitimately say "I can't afford a $40 box" have my sympathy.
I don't see that as an overwhelming majority. Nor, given that the local churches and other charity organizations are running drives to get boxes into those homes too, do I really see THAT as an issue.
It's two fucking DVD's man. TWO. Four if the only ones you buy are those crappy $9.99 ones they toss in the bargain bin because no one really wants to see Mike Myers dressed up as a furry and slaughtering childhood memories. Unless you are on charity, Social Security, or a pension, you can afford it. And if you are, then I guarantee you there is someone out there who would love to put one in your hands.
I'm sure that is true as well...
Correction: What you really meant was "what the broadcasters wanted in the first place: Nothing.
Because I can damn well tell you that I've wanted them to go digital since the change was first suggested the first time around and contrary to your assumption, I and many others like me are viewers.
What you may have tried to mean was "what the broadcasters and the select group of people who still use VCR's, 8-Tracks, and still haven't bothered to get a converter box wanted". Which would also be true. And fuck them too.
The spectrum is a public good. It should be used in the most effective way possible. Squatting on it with your 1940's analog technology because you don't want to spend the money on upgrading your equipment is ridiculous.
The fact that the switch to digital is going to be able to smoosh ALL of the current broadcasters into a smaller spectrum, and they'll still be able to provide more channels at better resolution and quality should be telling you something.
What are AT&T and Verizon going to do with their blocks? I don't care. Not because it's not important, but because it's not relevant to this discussion. They aren't the ones who are impeding the switch. They aren't the ones who drug their feet at every step in this conversion and who are now doing their best to whip up a grass roots scare campaign in a last minute effort to kill the project off. That's the broadcasters.
And "responsibility that it goes smoothly"? What sort of kool-aid are you drinking over there? There hasn't be one change of this nature at this scale that has ever gone 'smoothly'. What the government has a responsibility to do is make sure the public resources we've entrusted them with the stewardship over are being used responsibly and effectively. Not hand hold a bunch of people who aren't going to give a shit ever, until the day everything actually stops working.
Fuck what Verizon and AT&T are doing with their chunk of it, I just want the OTA folk to start using their chunks correctly. Right now I've got a TV in my room that half works digital (because everyone is broadcasting at something like 10% of their full power to avoid interference with analog signals) and half works analog (because not all the stations have their digital and analog towers in the same location and I've moved the anntena to attempt to get the best digital reception).
Just fucking do it already. It was suppose to happen years ago but people kept saying "we aren't ready!".
Most of the people who haven't upgraded, won't unless it actually breaks. The longer and more drawn out we make this already extremely overdue process, the more painful it's going to be.
Chuck Norris doesn't need cross hairs. He spits the bullet and if the target knows what's good for it, it makes sure it's in the path. If it doesn't, well Chuck has more painfull methods of ensuring a "one shot, one kill" ratio.