>>>"We The People will have a technically better television system"
With analog I get ~23 channels. With digital I get just 8 channels. (And a lot of blue screens of death, because those channels are too weak to receive.) How is getting 1/3rd as many channels a "better" system? I am losing Baltimore and Philadephia sports. I am losing MyNetworkTV. I am losing Telemundo. I am losing PBS and ABC. I am losing the independent "rerun channel" that has my favorite shows like Davinci's Inquest, Cold Squad, Stargate, and Farscape.
How is this in any way a "better" system?!?!? I call it a worse system. With fewer choices.
>>>"Would you hold the check until the money was available?"
The question is ridiculous. The U.S. Treasury has plenty of money coming-in every week (from individual paychecks). The $300 rebate checks would not bounce.
In the Digital Radio arena, the market is "sorting out" and most americans are deciding they are perfectly happy with the old analog standard (i.e. not upgrading). I suspect if the same principle had been applied, Digital TV would also be soundly ignored by most americans who are perfectly happy with the analog NTSC.
But it wasn't.
Instead the FCC has decided to "turn off" the analog, forcing people to switch to DTV even if they don't want to (raises hand). And therefore I think the FCC has an obligation to fix my soon-to-be "broken" analog set with no picture. The FCC's solution is quite elegant: Sell channels 52-83 to corporations. Pass the money to me in the form of $80 in coupons.
So the corporations end-up funding my "fix" for my broken analog set.
Spending million of dollars in postage/envelopes/paper, so they could send me a letter to tell me I'm getting a $300 rebate. I would have prefered they NOT send me a letter, and instead send me $300.40 ($300 refund plus the unspent postage/envelope money).
Here's another:
Spending millions studying butterflies, while some people are at home, struggling to pay their past-due grocery or electric or heating bills. How about letting these people KEEP their money, that way they can afford their bills? Screw the butterflies. People first.
The government hands you a $40 coupon. They supply you a list of retailers where you can redeem said coupon. So what exactly are you supposed to do?
Ignore the list, and throw away the free money coupon, simply because you "don't trust U.S. government"? Silly. If you want to redeem the $40, you have no choice. You HAVE to go with the list provided.
If I were president, I'd push for a 0% rate for anyone below $100,000 (i.e. the lower and middle income americans). They'd still be required to pay sales tax, electric tax, phone tax, cellphone tax, cable tax, internet tax, gasoline/road tax, natural gas tax, medicare tax, unemployment tax, welfare tax, social security tax,....., and State Income tax.
As long as the lower and middle incomes are paying all those other taxes, then they are paying their fair share to society, and no need to add U.S. tax on top of it.
You recommended the Zenith. Unfortunately the Zenith does not have an S-video output, which means it will look like crap on your set (I have one, and it suffers chroma blur). It also lacks a VCR Timer, thus obsoleting your favorite VCR or DVR recorder from doing time-shifting.
That's why people avoided buying it, and instead wanted the higher-quality Maxmedia or Echostar brands.
Recommending a substitute that doesn't do the same job is not a good recommendation.
While I am no fan of progressive tax (having paid $16,000 last year!),
in this instance the money doesn't come from taxpayers. The money for the $40 DTV coupons comes from the sale of channels 52-83 to businesses like Google, Comcast, AT&T, et cetera. It's the corporations that are funding the coupons w/ the U.S. government acting as the middleman handling the money.
I have been following this story closely, because I was interested in buying one of these MaxMedia converter boxes. What's "special" about these boxes, which the others do not provide, is an S-video output which can provide approximately 640x480 resolution on your old analog set. (The other boxes have Composite output which is only 440x480 due to the blur induced by overlaying the color signal on-top of the black-n-white image.)
This box also has a VCR tuner, which automatically changes channels, so your VCR or DVR can record multiple programs. Other boxes don't provide that function (thus obsoleting your old recorder).
So it's a unique box.
And that's why so many people wanted to purchase it. They had no way of knowing the company would send an email, "Thanks for your purchase; we've delayed shipping to June." They thought they were getting the box immediately! Nor did they have any way of knowing the company would violate Federal Law by redeeming coupons, but not delivering boxes. Nor did they know the company would bait-n-switch by saying, "The maxmedia's unavailable, but you can get the lesser substitute with only half the features." Yay.
Bottom Line:
Don't blame the victims. Blame the company which, frankly, acts like some scam artists I've met (delay tactics, bait-n-switch, empty promises). Said company even managed to deceive the U.S. Government's NTIA, who listed Maxmedia as a reputable company.
>>>"They ARE required to buy a converter if they wish to maintain the same functionality they have now"
That is a false statement. My brother wants to "maintain the same functionality" that he has now. Does he need to buy a DTV Converter box? No. Absolutely not. Because he has cable, and the cable provides analog signals for his analog set. (Similarly a Dish or Satellite viewer does not need to buy a DTV Converter box.)
Only people who watch TV using an antenna will need to upgrade their sets with a DTV Converter box.
>>>"I realize that with the converter, I still need to have some kind of antenna"
You need more than just an antenna. You need a *rooftop* antenna. As I discovered with my experiments, indoor antennas are basically worthless, only receiving 3-4 channels (within 10 mile range). In order to get more channels, I had to buy an external antenna.
DTV is much more difficult to receive than the old analog television (which would display a picture even with lousy reception). DTV expects a near-perfect signal, else you won't get it. Therefore indoor rabbit ears are not good enough.
>>>"The camera is automatic, so the surprised driver can't really do anything about it but turn around and go."
In that case, I guess no one is too blame. The driver can't erase photos, and the programmer is probably just dumping them to the central website without noticing he's taken pictures of private property.
You are using Google, in order to defend Google's trespass on private property. Hmmm. It occurs to me that Google's data might be falsified so they could cover their ass, and therefore it's not a reliable source for whether or not said road is public or private.
>>> >>>"because only the *inside* of a house is truly private."
>>>"This is a slippery slope. I believe that my "private" property is private. For anyone to publish photos of this should require my permission"
Your property is certainly private, but if sunlight bounces off your house and leaves your properly, then it's open to anyone who wants to capture it with a photonegative or CCD. You can control access to your land, but you can't control the sunlight that leave it & enters your neighbors' lens.
That's what I meant in my original statement. You can't block people from seeing the outside of your house; only the inside can be blocked. Only the inside view is truly private. (Unless you decide to erect huge walls around your property, but even then it's still visible from above.)
Reading the 1996 law, I don't see any place where the $200 billion tax cuts were specified "only for fiber optic upgrades" as is the case with other tax breaks like the $2000 hybrid car deduction.
These were just tax cuts. The end. The Congress allowed the corporations to spend the tax cuts however they felt like spending them.
I disagree with your notion that the Prius owner "got paid taxpayer money". If Uncle Sam had mailed him a $2000 check, then that would be true, but in this case it was a tax deduction, so the Prius owner was simply allowed to keep HIS money (you know: that he sweated, labored, and worked to earn). His money; the product of his own body's labor. Not anybody else's money.
And I also disagree with your "only Toyota got deductions" analogy. The $200 billion tax cuts were across the board and benefited many, many different companies.
Douglas Adams is over-rated. Other than his Hitchiker Trilogy (I'm excluding the last two books because they sucked), what else has Mr. Adams done that is worthy? The Dark Teatime of the Soul was mildly amusing, but I ultimately I threw it in the trash because I didn't much care for it.
Mr. Adams is a one-hit wonder, similar to George Lucas, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Which is good, but still overrated. I prefer authors with repeatability - one hit after another. Like Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke.
>>>"What does British Telecom have to do with internet access in the Netherlands?"
I see your point. Different states; different companies, but I just don't see the validity of comparing a metropolitan France to the entire U.S. (or the whole of Canada) which is largely just a gigantic cornfield with a couple cities sprinkled here & there. I've driven across the whole continent and it's a lot of empty space... not at all like driving across France or Germany which reminded me of a suburb (with cute homes and picturesque farmlets).
IMHO it's not a valid comparison to compare a small metropolitan region with a 2000-year-history of city-based settlement, versus a rural/metro/mountainous continent that was only recently settled (about 150 years). This reminds me of a conversation I had ~5 years ago with a UK resident. He kept insisting that the UK is superior to the U.S. because the UK has 100% paved roads, while the U.S. only has 70% (and punctuated it by saying "you americans suck"). Well, yes, the guy was technically correct. A lot of U.S. roads are just dirt or stone, but it's also an invalid comparison to make. The U.S. is not an island. The U.S. is 2500-fucking miles wide... of course a lot of it is untamed and unsettled! (with 50 megabit internet where I live, but only ~1 megabit in rural Missouri). That drags down the overall average for the continent and leads to false conclusions of how the U.S. is "falling behind" when in truth the average American is no worse off than the average European.
IMHO:
- Either compare the whole continent vs. the whole continent: E.U. versus U.S. E.U. versus Australia. - Or compare individual states (say Massachusetts) versus other states (say Italy). - And use the same scale. Provide homogeneity in your units, so you're not comparing tiny regions to mega-large regions.
>>>"The European Union isn't so old that network infrastructure has become a continental issue"
Well... the government in Brussels is talking about it as if it were a continental issue, trying to push consolidation across state borders and talking about "european haves and have-nots" as if the European Union were a single unit. Brussels is also proposing expenditures to help rural regions "catch up" to match metro regions of the E.U. Brussels acts as if the internet issue is a continental issue.
How does this affect Google Groups, which archives the last ~20 years of Usenet messages? One of the oldest messages I ever posted is still stored there, from 1988, and includes my real name, email account, and Usenet-style IP address. Will my personal data be erased to comply with E.U. law, but the text still preserved? Or would the whole thing be erased?
It would be a shame to see that piece of personal history disappear because of some poorly-worded law.
George Lucas showed unusual intelligence when he asked FOX Studios for the rights to the merchandise. Prior to 1976, virtually no other filmmakers did that, because it was believed by both directors and studios that "toys" were worthless, and the real money was in the film.
FOX was more than happy to sign that contract, because they thought Lucas was a fool. Well Lucas turned-out to be smarter than everybody else. And the fact that Andrew Ainsworth in 1976 failed to request payment for post-movie merchandishing is HIS OWN FAULT, and he has no one to blame but himself.
George Lucas' contract with Fox gives him the right to make money off the merchandise.
Andrew Ainsworth's contract does not; he could have requested a share, but he chose not to. His own dumb fault.
The teenage brain is still growing & forming connections. That's what most teenagers demonstrate poor judgment.
As for the class:
I think it's okay, but I'm afraid it will result in cuts of other classes. How many graduates know "wear a condom" and "don't trust strangers" when they graduate, but have no clue how old the USA is, or where it's located on a map, or why the Bill of Rights exists. IMHO our government schools are teaching a lot of BS, and not the things that matter like history and geography (which I suspect is done on purpose; ignorant voters are easier to manipulate by the politicians).
What's so special about Gmail? I signed-up for it a few years ago when everyone was talking about it, and I didn't see anything that made me go "wow" with delight. To this day I continue using my yahoo account, since everybody knows that's where I'm located (since 1997), and the Gmail sits idle. I couldn't find a compelling reason to switch.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>"We The People will have a technically better television system"
With analog I get ~23 channels. With digital I get just 8 channels. (And a lot of blue screens of death, because those channels are too weak to receive.) How is getting 1/3rd as many channels a "better" system? I am losing Baltimore and Philadephia sports. I am losing MyNetworkTV. I am losing Telemundo. I am losing PBS and ABC. I am losing the independent "rerun channel" that has my favorite shows like Davinci's Inquest, Cold Squad, Stargate, and Farscape.
How is this in any way a "better" system?!?!?
I call it a worse system.
With fewer choices.
>>>"Would you hold the check until the money was available?"
The question is ridiculous. The U.S. Treasury has plenty of money coming-in every week (from individual paychecks). The $300 rebate checks would not bounce.
That sounded like sarcasm. ;-)
In the Digital Radio arena, the market is "sorting out" and most americans are deciding they are perfectly happy with the old analog standard (i.e. not upgrading). I suspect if the same principle had been applied, Digital TV would also be soundly ignored by most americans who are perfectly happy with the analog NTSC.
But it wasn't.
Instead the FCC has decided to "turn off" the analog, forcing people to switch to DTV even if they don't want to (raises hand). And therefore I think the FCC has an obligation to fix my soon-to-be "broken" analog set with no picture. The FCC's solution is quite elegant: Sell channels 52-83 to corporations. Pass the money to me in the form of $80 in coupons.
So the corporations end-up funding my "fix" for my broken analog set.
Nice.
>>>"Name one waste."
Spending million of dollars in postage/envelopes/paper, so they could send me a letter to tell me I'm getting a $300 rebate. I would have prefered they NOT send me a letter, and instead send me $300.40 ($300 refund plus the unspent postage/envelope money).
Here's another:
Spending millions studying butterflies, while some people are at home, struggling to pay their past-due grocery or electric or heating bills. How about letting these people KEEP their money, that way they can afford their bills? Screw the butterflies. People first.
The government hands you a $40 coupon.
They supply you a list of retailers where you can redeem said coupon.
So what exactly are you supposed to do?
Ignore the list, and throw away the free money coupon, simply because you "don't trust U.S. government"? Silly. If you want to redeem the $40, you have no choice. You HAVE to go with the list provided.
That's progressive tax in a nutshell.
....., and State Income tax.
If I were president, I'd push for a 0% rate for anyone below $100,000 (i.e. the lower and middle income americans). They'd still be required to pay sales tax, electric tax, phone tax, cellphone tax, cable tax, internet tax, gasoline/road tax, natural gas tax, medicare tax, unemployment tax, welfare tax, social security tax,
As long as the lower and middle incomes are paying all those other taxes, then they are paying their fair share to society, and no need to add U.S. tax on top of it.
You recommended the Zenith. Unfortunately the Zenith does not have an S-video output, which means it will look like crap on your set (I have one, and it suffers chroma blur). It also lacks a VCR Timer, thus obsoleting your favorite VCR or DVR recorder from doing time-shifting.
That's why people avoided buying it, and instead wanted the higher-quality Maxmedia or Echostar brands.
Recommending a substitute that doesn't do the same job is not a good recommendation.
While I am no fan of progressive tax (having paid $16,000 last year!),
in this instance the money doesn't come from taxpayers. The money for the $40 DTV coupons comes from the sale of channels 52-83 to businesses like Google, Comcast, AT&T, et cetera. It's the corporations that are funding the coupons w/ the U.S. government acting as the middleman handling the money.
The U.S. is identical to the U.K. experience you just described.
I have been following this story closely, because I was interested in buying one of these MaxMedia converter boxes. What's "special" about these boxes, which the others do not provide, is an S-video output which can provide approximately 640x480 resolution on your old analog set. (The other boxes have Composite output which is only 440x480 due to the blur induced by overlaying the color signal on-top of the black-n-white image.)
This box also has a VCR tuner, which automatically changes channels, so your VCR or DVR can record multiple programs. Other boxes don't provide that function (thus obsoleting your old recorder).
So it's a unique box.
And that's why so many people wanted to purchase it. They had no way of knowing the company would send an email, "Thanks for your purchase; we've delayed shipping to June." They thought they were getting the box immediately! Nor did they have any way of knowing the company would violate Federal Law by redeeming coupons, but not delivering boxes. Nor did they know the company would bait-n-switch by saying, "The maxmedia's unavailable, but you can get the lesser substitute with only half the features." Yay.
Bottom Line:
Don't blame the victims. Blame the company which, frankly, acts like some scam artists I've met (delay tactics, bait-n-switch, empty promises). Said company even managed to deceive the U.S. Government's NTIA, who listed Maxmedia as a reputable company.
>>>"They ARE required to buy a converter if they wish to maintain the same functionality they have now"
That is a false statement. My brother wants to "maintain the same functionality" that he has now. Does he need to buy a DTV Converter box? No. Absolutely not. Because he has cable, and the cable provides analog signals for his analog set. (Similarly a Dish or Satellite viewer does not need to buy a DTV Converter box.)
Only people who watch TV using an antenna will need to upgrade their sets with a DTV Converter box.
>>>"I realize that with the converter, I still need to have some kind of antenna"
You need more than just an antenna. You need a *rooftop* antenna. As I discovered with my experiments, indoor antennas are basically worthless, only receiving 3-4 channels (within 10 mile range). In order to get more channels, I had to buy an external antenna.
DTV is much more difficult to receive than the old analog television (which would display a picture even with lousy reception). DTV expects a near-perfect signal, else you won't get it. Therefore indoor rabbit ears are not good enough.
>>>"The camera is automatic, so the surprised driver can't really do anything about it but turn around and go."
In that case, I guess no one is too blame. The driver can't erase photos, and the programmer is probably just dumping them to the central website without noticing he's taken pictures of private property.
So let me get this straight:
You are using Google, in order to defend Google's trespass on private property. Hmmm. It occurs to me that Google's data might be falsified so they could cover their ass, and therefore it's not a reliable source for whether or not said road is public or private.
Being a nudist, I wouldn't care.
;-)
Enjoy the view.
Clearly Google's vehicle was guilty of trespassing on the McKee's property. Once they realized what they had done, they should have erased the photos.
But since they didn't, I'd use the photos in a court case to sue the company for violating another person's private property.
>>> >>>"because only the *inside* of a house is truly private."
>>>"This is a slippery slope. I believe that my "private" property is private. For anyone to publish photos of this should require my permission"
Your property is certainly private, but if sunlight bounces off your house and leaves your properly, then it's open to anyone who wants to capture it with a photonegative or CCD. You can control access to your land, but you can't control the sunlight that leave it & enters your neighbors' lens.
That's what I meant in my original statement. You can't block people from seeing the outside of your house; only the inside can be blocked. Only the inside view is truly private. (Unless you decide to erect huge walls around your property, but even then it's still visible from above.)
Reading the 1996 law, I don't see any place where the $200 billion tax cuts were specified "only for fiber optic upgrades" as is the case with other tax breaks like the $2000 hybrid car deduction.
These were just tax cuts. The end. The Congress allowed the corporations to spend the tax cuts however they felt like spending them.
I disagree with your notion that the Prius owner "got paid taxpayer money". If Uncle Sam had mailed him a $2000 check, then that would be true, but in this case it was a tax deduction, so the Prius owner was simply allowed to keep HIS money (you know: that he sweated, labored, and worked to earn). His money; the product of his own body's labor. Not anybody else's money.
And I also disagree with your "only Toyota got deductions" analogy. The $200 billion tax cuts were across the board and benefited many, many different companies.
Douglas Adams is over-rated. Other than his Hitchiker Trilogy (I'm excluding the last two books because they sucked), what else has Mr. Adams done that is worthy? The Dark Teatime of the Soul was mildly amusing, but I ultimately I threw it in the trash because I didn't much care for it.
Mr. Adams is a one-hit wonder, similar to George Lucas, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Which is good, but still overrated. I prefer authors with repeatability - one hit after another. Like Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke.
>>>"What does British Telecom have to do with internet access in the Netherlands?"
I see your point. Different states; different companies, but I just don't see the validity of comparing a metropolitan France to the entire U.S. (or the whole of Canada) which is largely just a gigantic cornfield with a couple cities sprinkled here & there. I've driven across the whole continent and it's a lot of empty space... not at all like driving across France or Germany which reminded me of a suburb (with cute homes and picturesque farmlets).
IMHO it's not a valid comparison to compare a small metropolitan region with a 2000-year-history of city-based settlement, versus a rural/metro/mountainous continent that was only recently settled (about 150 years). This reminds me of a conversation I had ~5 years ago with a UK resident. He kept insisting that the UK is superior to the U.S. because the UK has 100% paved roads, while the U.S. only has 70% (and punctuated it by saying "you americans suck"). Well, yes, the guy was technically correct. A lot of U.S. roads are just dirt or stone, but it's also an invalid comparison to make. The U.S. is not an island. The U.S. is 2500-fucking miles wide... of course a lot of it is untamed and unsettled! (with 50 megabit internet where I live, but only ~1 megabit in rural Missouri). That drags down the overall average for the continent and leads to false conclusions of how the U.S. is "falling behind" when in truth the average American is no worse off than the average European.
IMHO:
- Either compare the whole continent vs. the whole continent: E.U. versus U.S. E.U. versus Australia.
- Or compare individual states (say Massachusetts) versus other states (say Italy).
- And use the same scale. Provide homogeneity in your units, so you're not comparing tiny regions to mega-large regions.
>>>"The European Union isn't so old that network infrastructure has become a continental issue"
Well... the government in Brussels is talking about it as if it were a continental issue, trying to push consolidation across state borders and talking about "european haves and have-nots" as if the European Union were a single unit. Brussels is also proposing expenditures to help rural regions "catch up" to match metro regions of the E.U. Brussels acts as if the internet issue is a continental issue.
Just curious:
How does this affect Google Groups, which archives the last ~20 years of Usenet messages? One of the oldest messages I ever posted is still stored there, from 1988, and includes my real name, email account, and Usenet-style IP address. Will my personal data be erased to comply with E.U. law, but the text still preserved? Or would the whole thing be erased?
It would be a shame to see that piece of personal history disappear because of some poorly-worded law.
IMHO
George Lucas showed unusual intelligence when he asked FOX Studios for the rights to the merchandise. Prior to 1976, virtually no other filmmakers did that, because it was believed by both directors and studios that "toys" were worthless, and the real money was in the film.
FOX was more than happy to sign that contract, because they thought Lucas was a fool. Well Lucas turned-out to be smarter than everybody else. And the fact that Andrew Ainsworth in 1976 failed to request payment for post-movie merchandishing is HIS OWN FAULT, and he has no one to blame but himself.
George Lucas' contract with Fox gives him the right to make money off the merchandise.
Andrew Ainsworth's contract does not; he could have requested a share, but he chose not to. His own dumb fault.
The teenage brain is still growing & forming connections. That's what most teenagers demonstrate poor judgment.
As for the class:
I think it's okay, but I'm afraid it will result in cuts of other classes. How many graduates know "wear a condom" and "don't trust strangers" when they graduate, but have no clue how old the USA is, or where it's located on a map, or why the Bill of Rights exists. IMHO our government schools are teaching a lot of BS, and not the things that matter like history and geography (which I suspect is done on purpose; ignorant voters are easier to manipulate by the politicians).
Alright.
What's so special about Gmail? I signed-up for it a few years ago when everyone was talking about it, and I didn't see anything that made me go "wow" with delight. To this day I continue using my yahoo account, since everybody knows that's where I'm located (since 1997), and the Gmail sits idle. I couldn't find a compelling reason to switch.