Broadcast TV is the lifeline to civilization for many people in this nation.
Wow, melodrama, did you learn about that on the History channel?
I fail to see the "digital/HD broadcast only" imperative. Who cares if broadcast is analog or digital?
It's mostly due to frequency usage issues. The FCC and US Government wants to free up the bandwidt used for analog frequencies. If the FCC doesn't set a date broadcasters will drag their feet forever. I just fail to see the why TV is so critical, of course I didn't realize it was a lifeline to civilization.
Do you really think it makes sense to alienate over ten percent of the US population?
No, I don't think it makes sense to alienate anyone, but, I don't think lack of OTA TV has to result in alienation. There are many other sources of news and entertainment. My argument isn't that anyone should be alienated or disenfranchized due to their economic position or any other reason. My argument is TV isn't as critical as many people think. Many of us could live without it and probably be happier and healthier.
Owning a TV doesn't mean you're a slave to it and will never do anything else. That fact that we can all cite examples of someone who just watches TV all the time doesn't refute what I'm saying.
OTOH, TV has very little redeeming value. Programming is designed to keep you watching and tuned in. The recent fights by broadcasters against Tivo and against Satellite companys offering network broadcasts from other areas just emphasize the point that TV broadcasters want you to sit on the couch from 6-10pm every night and watch their shows. Owning a TV doesn't mean you're a slave to it, but not owning a TV (or not being able to pick up OTA broadcasts) guarantees you are not a slave to it.
Once we admit that TV is something that can be used responsibly, the argument that it doesn't matter if poor people can't afford it because it's good for them turns into something incredibly patronizing, which is how I see it.
How so? The fact of the matter is there is little downside to not having a TV. It's not a right, it's not a requirement to fit in to society, it's not a requirement for local or national news. I just can't get too upset about a certain percentage of the population not being able to use their TV sets.
...won't give you Action news at 11. Radio does not give you the visual.
Again, how often is 'Action news at 11' critical. I cancelled my satellite a couple months ago because I didn't watch it much and didn't watch the news for a considerable amount of time before that. Wow, I'm still a functioning member of society - even without the news.
As for your list of "possibles"...I think that is grossly unfair and arrogant. You do not know how much time "those people" spend watching tv.
I don't know how much time any individual person spends watching TV, or even how much time the 12% that watches TV OTA spends in front of the tube. What I do know is that statistically americans watch a lot of TV. According to Nielsen the average american watches 3 hours and 46 minutes EVERY DAY. Considering there are many people that don't watch any or are too busy to watch 3 hours a day, somebody is watching way more than that.
One of the MAJOR boastings of our election system is the TV media to get the politician's words to people. By removing TV's for 12% you are effecting 12% of the voting population.
So how did we ever hold elections prior to TV? IMHO all political advertising on TV does is help ensure the most charasmatic, likeable person gets elected into office. What the politician says has much less impact than how he/she says it or how they look on TV. Personally I've never heard our election system boast about TV media.
I would also like it to be known, that the broadcast TV media makes a lot of profit - even from broadcast TV....
Broadcast TV used to make a lot of profit. Over the last few years they have been floundering seriously.
...the only reason they're so poor that they can't afford a new TV is because they never go outside, have shit jobs, are unsociable, fat, and unable to grow their own vegetables.
Not my point at all. I'm just saying, if you aren't sitting in front of your TV you can do something useful with your time.
Those poor people need to get off their butts and breathe some fresh air, maybe get a better job.
No, for the most part we ALL need to get off our assess and get some fresh air, lose some weight and maybe get a better job. The average American watches way too much TV - rich or poor.
And cut off a main source of local and national news for 12% of the population.
That's just silly. There are many other, better ways of getting news. Newspapers and radio to name two. People are not going to get angry about missing the news, they are going to get angry about missing Oprah.
You were warned about the switchover nearly (maybe even more than) a decade ago;
Even though that's true, I'll bet when it happens there are thousands of people that go to switch on their TVs and are totally distressed by the lack of signal. I would HATE to be a TV repairman when this happens. I bet their phones ring off the hook.
They might just wake up and realize how much they are being crapped on by our economic and legal systems. They might decide that there is a small group of people at the top who are responsible.
With a 2 billion dollar budget it makes no difference if you start with a skateboard, the job can get done. You hire Carroll Shelby (or a younger incarnation) to design another 'Ferrari Killer' and stick the Taurus grille and nameplate on it somewhere.
Ahh... but, as your Von Braun quote at the bottom of your post insinuates, sometimes adding resources doesn't produce. A 2 billion dollar budget does not guarantee the success of any project. History is littered with projects that have had exorbinant amounts of money thrown at them and still failed. That's exactly the situation Microsoft is in. They have tried the 'throw money at the problem' approach before. Sometimes they win(IE, MS Office), sometimes they lose (IIS, SQL Server, Windows Me). A bigger budget does not always correlate to a better product.
True. But what about those who can't afford a computer or the internet (or don't know how to use them effectively) who still watch a 20 year old set and for whom upgrading will be a significant expense?
Maybe those people can do something with their lives besides watch TV. I think Television is very rarely a good thing in anyone's life. Possibly it will encourage these people to go out, get better jobs, be more social, get more exercise, work in their garden, anything but watch TV.
You and I probably have very reasonable alternatives to analog TV
TV is not a necessity. People can (and have) lived without it. There are many reasonable alternatives to analog TV. Books, newspapers, libraries, clubs, local events, radio.
OTOH, if the 12% is a lower class demographic, they probably have less disposable income and thus are not the people television advertisers are trying to reach.
It's possible, from a strictly business point of view, that this could be a good move for broadcasters all around. Dropping the bottom 12% of viewers might result in more accurate nielsen ratings based on consumers that have money to spend. Overall programming quality may go up and result in better TV overall.
...they are going heavy into gaming, consoles, media centers, cell phones, etc. Looks to me like they are diversifying/adding products as fast as possible
They are attempting to diversify, but so far their success has been limited. Companies like GE and IBM are very diverse and make a profit in many different areas. AFAIK, the only areas that Microsoft has been able to make a measurable, consistent profit are the OS software and the Office Suite.
A Ford Taurus with a 2 billion dollar budget will catch a Ferrari. -Rick
Probably not, because deep down it's just a Taurus built by Ford. I think that's the whole point of the comparison. Google is the Ferrari of search engines. They specialize in search engines and have a tradition of successful search engines (like Ferrari does in racing). Microsoft is the Ford of the software industry. Microsoft builds cheap, crappy software (cars) and trys to fill the software needs of the whole spectrum of consumers. It's difficult for a generalized company to compete on quality and performance against a company that specifically focuses on one goal.
If it's an endurance race over a period of years, the Ford will catch up.
Interesting, I've never seen and endurance race last years. Typcally 24 hours is long enough. Funny, I didn't see any Tauruses in the results for this year's Daytona 24 hour Race. Several Ferraris, and several other Fords, but no Tauruses. Of course to be fair the comparison should have been made with a specific Ferrari model, maybe the Ferrari 360.
Regardless, I would feel comfortable stating that given almost any kind of course and length of race the Ferrari 360 would significantly embarass anyone with a Ford Taurus.
IBM shifted what they did and became primarily a services company. They were always hot at dealing with clients in a sales situation, and having worked with them, they are professional.
Exactly, IBM has re-invented itself many times since it's origin in 1888. They have proved that they can adjust with the market and remain viable. Microsoft, OTOH, is a one hit wonder. They were in the right place at the right time to achieve desktop dominance, everything else has either played off of that, or not done very well.
Everyone talks about Microsoft's cash reserves, market dominance and compares them to GE. Microsoft is not GE. They may have the cash of a big company, but they are trapped in a particular market. If they lose their desktop dominance, they are going to be in big trouble fast.
why do all the best climate scientist think it is happening right now and will get worse?
Because they are climate scientists. Without a big crisis on the horizon their grants will get cut. Science is as political as politics - maybe moreso. Scientist rely on grants and funding from outside sources, so sometimes they sensationalize their research to get more funding.
Umm... didn't say I never met a smart dog. I said mine aren't - but actually that's not true either.
My basset, who is a puppy almost a year old, can figure out how to pull the pet door open. OTOH, she runs around and barks at the lawn mower when I'm cutting the grass.
Yeah, but why is work centralized in dense urban areas, and why does it have to be? Explain me that.
Not exactly sure. Part of it these days is technology. You get 50+ miles outside of an urban center its almost cost prohibitive to get a good high speed connection. This is getting better with some of the new wireless technology, but it's still difficult.
Outside of that, it's probably a problem for a sociologist. I just know that's the way it normally is.
In the 1950's, the federal government commissioned the Interstate Highway System. Any expansion of highway infrastructure could be commissioned federally along the same lines.
I don't think that would be easy to do these days. In the 50s those roads weren't heavily traveled like they are today. Any kind of federal mandate would be snarled in beauracracy FOREVER.
If you have to lay down rail, then you're going to be laying down rail lines, which are as land-intensive as roads and additionally limited only to trains that are built for that rail.
I don't think rail lines would be as 'land-intensive' as a highway. Understand, I'm not advocating getting rid of cars or roads. I just think if there was an alternative method of transportation it would be better for everyone.
I have no idea what the feasability is, but why not expand highways three-dimensionally in congested areas by building an overpass-like road above and parallel to the main road, effectively doubling capacity without consuming significantly more land?
Problem with this is cost. Building roads up in the sky like that are expensive and time consuming, plus the engineering required is much more significant to ensure they don't collapse and smash the people underneath. These do exist, but it's not a solution that you see often.
I still maintain that the *best* way to solve the problem is to circumvent it by abolishing the commute by allowing workers to either work out of their homes or live close to where they work.
I just don't see this happening in the near future. The high paying jobs are almost always in the urban areas, but everyone wants to live in the quiet suburban areas. This has been going on pretty much ever since the primary industry moved away from agriculture. I've also talked to many people recently that don't like working from home. Many people miss the social interaction that comes from their job. Being sequestered in your house day after day isn't all it's cracked up to be. As long as people have a free choice about where they can live and where they can work there people will commute.
Building cars that use some other kind of fuel could be done nationally, but building roads and additional infrastructure would have to be done at a local level. The state, afaik, is always responsible for building and maintaining roads, even Interstate Highways. They get federal funding for this, but the work is done locally by local contractors or state workers. This would be the same for roads and for rail.
The other problem is that the all of the cars contribute to congestion on urban roads, where there is no good way to increase capacity. For example, I live about 50 miles north of Denver. If I want to take some friend and spend the evening in lower downtown the only realistic option I have is to drive and contribute to the traffic and parking problems they already have. The Denver downtown area is relatively small, easy to get around by walking or cab. If I could jump on a train we could go down there, spend the evening, jump back on the train, not have to worry about traffic or parking. Same thing if I commuted to Denver (which many people in this area do). If we had a rail system I could avoid the traffic, not have to worry about bad weather, be able to work, read, sleep during my commute.
Bottom line, I don't see how we can continue to expand our highways forever. They are clogged and (appearantly) impossible to maintain now. How many lanes will ever be enough?
Slashdot Mirror
I stand corrected.
Broadcast TV is the lifeline to civilization for many people in this nation.
Wow, melodrama, did you learn about that on the History channel?
I fail to see the "digital/HD broadcast only" imperative. Who cares if broadcast is analog or digital?
It's mostly due to frequency usage issues. The FCC and US Government wants to free up the bandwidt used for analog frequencies. If the FCC doesn't set a date broadcasters will drag their feet forever. I just fail to see the why TV is so critical, of course I didn't realize it was a lifeline to civilization.
Do you really think it makes sense to alienate over ten percent of the US population?
No, I don't think it makes sense to alienate anyone, but, I don't think lack of OTA TV has to result in alienation. There are many other sources of news and entertainment. My argument isn't that anyone should be alienated or disenfranchized due to their economic position or any other reason. My argument is TV isn't as critical as many people think. Many of us could live without it and probably be happier and healthier.
There's also a PAX channel that could be picked up near where I used to live
Watch PAX for a week. You'll swear off TV FOREVER.
Maybe those people can do something with their lives besides read Slashdot.
Yeah, but what else would I do for 8 hours at work.
Owning a TV doesn't mean you're a slave to it and will never do anything else. That fact that we can all cite examples of someone who just watches TV all the time doesn't refute what I'm saying.
OTOH, TV has very little redeeming value. Programming is designed to keep you watching and tuned in. The recent fights by broadcasters against Tivo and against Satellite companys offering network broadcasts from other areas just emphasize the point that TV broadcasters want you to sit on the couch from 6-10pm every night and watch their shows. Owning a TV doesn't mean you're a slave to it, but not owning a TV (or not being able to pick up OTA broadcasts) guarantees you are not a slave to it.
Once we admit that TV is something that can be used responsibly, the argument that it doesn't matter if poor people can't afford it because it's good for them turns into something incredibly patronizing, which is how I see it.
How so? The fact of the matter is there is little downside to not having a TV. It's not a right, it's not a requirement to fit in to society, it's not a requirement for local or national news. I just can't get too upset about a certain percentage of the population not being able to use their TV sets.
...won't give you Action news at 11. Radio does not give you the visual.
Again, how often is 'Action news at 11' critical. I cancelled my satellite a couple months ago because I didn't watch it much and didn't watch the news for a considerable amount of time before that. Wow, I'm still a functioning member of society - even without the news.
As for your list of "possibles"...I think that is grossly unfair and arrogant. You do not know how much time "those people" spend watching tv.
I don't know how much time any individual person spends watching TV, or even how much time the 12% that watches TV OTA spends in front of the tube. What I do know is that statistically americans watch a lot of TV. According to Nielsen the average american watches 3 hours and 46 minutes EVERY DAY. Considering there are many people that don't watch any or are too busy to watch 3 hours a day, somebody is watching way more than that.
One of the MAJOR boastings of our election system is the TV media to get the politician's words to people. By removing TV's for 12% you are effecting 12% of the voting population.
So how did we ever hold elections prior to TV? IMHO all political advertising on TV does is help ensure the most charasmatic, likeable person gets elected into office. What the politician says has much less impact than how he/she says it or how they look on TV. Personally I've never heard our election system boast about TV media.
I would also like it to be known, that the broadcast TV media makes a lot of profit - even from broadcast TV....
Broadcast TV used to make a lot of profit. Over the last few years they have been floundering seriously.
...the only reason they're so poor that they can't afford a new TV is because they never go outside, have shit jobs, are unsociable, fat, and unable to grow their own vegetables.
Not my point at all. I'm just saying, if you aren't sitting in front of your TV you can do something useful with your time.
Those poor people need to get off their butts and breathe some fresh air, maybe get a better job.
No, for the most part we ALL need to get off our assess and get some fresh air, lose some weight and maybe get a better job. The average American watches way too much TV - rich or poor.
And cut off a main source of local and national news for 12% of the population.
That's just silly. There are many other, better ways of getting news. Newspapers and radio to name two. People are not going to get angry about missing the news, they are going to get angry about missing Oprah.
You were warned about the switchover nearly (maybe even more than) a decade ago;
Even though that's true, I'll bet when it happens there are thousands of people that go to switch on their TVs and are totally distressed by the lack of signal. I would HATE to be a TV repairman when this happens. I bet their phones ring off the hook.
They might just wake up and realize how much they are being crapped on by our economic and legal systems. They might decide that there is a small group of people at the top who are responsible.
Might not be the worst thing ever.
With a 2 billion dollar budget it makes no difference if you start with a skateboard, the job can get done. You hire Carroll Shelby (or a younger incarnation) to design another 'Ferrari Killer' and stick the Taurus grille and nameplate on it somewhere.
Ahh... but, as your Von Braun quote at the bottom of your post insinuates, sometimes adding resources doesn't produce. A 2 billion dollar budget does not guarantee the success of any project. History is littered with projects that have had exorbinant amounts of money thrown at them and still failed. That's exactly the situation Microsoft is in. They have tried the 'throw money at the problem' approach before. Sometimes they win(IE, MS Office), sometimes they lose (IIS, SQL Server, Windows Me). A bigger budget does not always correlate to a better product.
True. But what about those who can't afford a computer or the internet (or don't know how to use them effectively) who still watch a 20 year old set and for whom upgrading will be a significant expense?
Maybe those people can do something with their lives besides watch TV. I think Television is very rarely a good thing in anyone's life. Possibly it will encourage these people to go out, get better jobs, be more social, get more exercise, work in their garden, anything but watch TV.
You and I probably have very reasonable alternatives to analog TV
TV is not a necessity. People can (and have) lived without it. There are many reasonable alternatives to analog TV. Books, newspapers, libraries, clubs, local events, radio.
OTOH, if the 12% is a lower class demographic, they probably have less disposable income and thus are not the people television advertisers are trying to reach.
It's possible, from a strictly business point of view, that this could be a good move for broadcasters all around. Dropping the bottom 12% of viewers might result in more accurate nielsen ratings based on consumers that have money to spend. Overall programming quality may go up and result in better TV overall.
...they are going heavy into gaming, consoles, media centers, cell phones, etc. Looks to me like they are diversifying/adding products as fast as possible
They are attempting to diversify, but so far their success has been limited. Companies like GE and IBM are very diverse and make a profit in many different areas. AFAIK, the only areas that Microsoft has been able to make a measurable, consistent profit are the OS software and the Office Suite.
And a Death Star. Woo Hoo!
A Ford Taurus with a 2 billion dollar budget will catch a Ferrari. -Rick
Probably not, because deep down it's just a Taurus built by Ford. I think that's the whole point of the comparison. Google is the Ferrari of search engines. They specialize in search engines and have a tradition of successful search engines (like Ferrari does in racing). Microsoft is the Ford of the software industry. Microsoft builds cheap, crappy software (cars) and trys to fill the software needs of the whole spectrum of consumers. It's difficult for a generalized company to compete on quality and performance against a company that specifically focuses on one goal.
If it's an endurance race over a period of years, the Ford will catch up.
Interesting, I've never seen and endurance race last years. Typcally 24 hours is long enough. Funny, I didn't see any Tauruses in the results for this year's Daytona 24 hour Race. Several Ferraris, and several other Fords, but no Tauruses. Of course to be fair the comparison should have been made with a specific Ferrari model, maybe the Ferrari 360.
Regardless, I would feel comfortable stating that given almost any kind of course and length of race the Ferrari 360 would significantly embarass anyone with a Ford Taurus.
IBM shifted what they did and became primarily a services company. They were always hot at dealing with clients in a sales situation, and having worked with them, they are professional.
Exactly, IBM has re-invented itself many times since it's origin in 1888. They have proved that they can adjust with the market and remain viable. Microsoft, OTOH, is a one hit wonder. They were in the right place at the right time to achieve desktop dominance, everything else has either played off of that, or not done very well.
Everyone talks about Microsoft's cash reserves, market dominance and compares them to GE. Microsoft is not GE. They may have the cash of a big company, but they are trapped in a particular market. If they lose their desktop dominance, they are going to be in big trouble fast.
why do all the best climate scientist think it is happening right now and will get worse?
Because they are climate scientists. Without a big crisis on the horizon their grants will get cut. Science is as political as politics - maybe moreso. Scientist rely on grants and funding from outside sources, so sometimes they sensationalize their research to get more funding.
Umm... didn't say I never met a smart dog. I said mine aren't - but actually that's not true either.
My basset, who is a puppy almost a year old, can figure out how to pull the pet door open. OTOH, she runs around and barks at the lawn mower when I'm cutting the grass.
Yeah, but why is work centralized in dense urban areas, and why does it have to be? Explain me that.
Not exactly sure. Part of it these days is technology. You get 50+ miles outside of an urban center its almost cost prohibitive to get a good high speed connection. This is getting better with some of the new wireless technology, but it's still difficult.
Outside of that, it's probably a problem for a sociologist. I just know that's the way it normally is.
In the 1950's, the federal government commissioned the Interstate Highway System. Any expansion of highway infrastructure could be commissioned federally along the same lines.
I don't think that would be easy to do these days. In the 50s those roads weren't heavily traveled like they are today. Any kind of federal mandate would be snarled in beauracracy FOREVER.
If you have to lay down rail, then you're going to be laying down rail lines, which are as land-intensive as roads and additionally limited only to trains that are built for that rail.
I don't think rail lines would be as 'land-intensive' as a highway. Understand, I'm not advocating getting rid of cars or roads. I just think if there was an alternative method of transportation it would be better for everyone.
I have no idea what the feasability is, but why not expand highways three-dimensionally in congested areas by building an overpass-like road above and parallel to the main road, effectively doubling capacity without consuming significantly more land?
Problem with this is cost. Building roads up in the sky like that are expensive and time consuming, plus the engineering required is much more significant to ensure they don't collapse and smash the people underneath. These do exist, but it's not a solution that you see often.
I still maintain that the *best* way to solve the problem is to circumvent it by abolishing the commute by allowing workers to either work out of their homes or live close to where they work.
I just don't see this happening in the near future. The high paying jobs are almost always in the urban areas, but everyone wants to live in the quiet suburban areas. This has been going on pretty much ever since the primary industry moved away from agriculture. I've also talked to many people recently that don't like working from home. Many people miss the social interaction that comes from their job. Being sequestered in your house day after day isn't all it's cracked up to be. As long as people have a free choice about where they can live and where they can work there people will commute.
They probably test to see if they are MORE brain-damaged. I think my dogs are brain damaged to start with. Of course they might just be dumb...
Building cars that use some other kind of fuel could be done nationally, but building roads and additional infrastructure would have to be done at a local level. The state, afaik, is always responsible for building and maintaining roads, even Interstate Highways. They get federal funding for this, but the work is done locally by local contractors or state workers. This would be the same for roads and for rail.
The other problem is that the all of the cars contribute to congestion on urban roads, where there is no good way to increase capacity. For example, I live about 50 miles north of Denver. If I want to take some friend and spend the evening in lower downtown the only realistic option I have is to drive and contribute to the traffic and parking problems they already have. The Denver downtown area is relatively small, easy to get around by walking or cab. If I could jump on a train we could go down there, spend the evening, jump back on the train, not have to worry about traffic or parking. Same thing if I commuted to Denver (which many people in this area do). If we had a rail system I could avoid the traffic, not have to worry about bad weather, be able to work, read, sleep during my commute.
Bottom line, I don't see how we can continue to expand our highways forever. They are clogged and (appearantly) impossible to maintain now. How many lanes will ever be enough?