Yes; you both suck equally. Congratulations.
From Wiki:
“In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) conducts auctions of licenses for electromagnetic spectrum. The FCC has been conducting competitive auctions since 1994 rather than assigning spectrum through comparative hearings (under which the specific merits of each applicant is litigated), or through lotteries. FCC spectrum auctions are open to any company or individual that is determined by the Commission to be a qualified bidder.”
So, initailly, our cash strapped government makes some money. Then, the owners of those new licenses will use them to create profit, use that profit to employ people, people use that income to buy widgets, the wiget people use that income to… etc., etc.
ETA: Per Wiki, the auction of the analog stations in the 700 Mhz range netted $19.592 billon. link
Yes, AND you included a snarky little comment about my “tone”. It was that little comeback that I was referring to when I pointed out that…
“Gosh… I wonder if the constant Bush-bashers around here can take as well as they dish out?” And Giraffe… you stood up loud and stood up proud to declare “No! We can’t!”
Until a natural disaster takes down Comcast. I lost power, cable & high-speed Internet when Hurricane Ike blew through Houston. Luckily, my power came back the next day. My Comcast was down for a week, but I was able to watch local TV through my little antenna.
I procrastinated about getting a coupon & may have to pay full price for a converter for the kitchen TV. No big problem. (Getting another cable line would be cheap–but I don’t want to depend on Comcast 100%.)
What’s a minor convenience for me will be a major one for some people. Who make less than the median income here at the SDMB. So they don’t matter, I guess.
Could somebody please tell me what wonderful technical advances will come after the big switch? Something really impressive, please!
Edited to add a question to Sateryn76: What specific ventures can you envision?
YES!!! I have been equated with Giraffe!!
Thank you MsWhatsit, my work here is done. Good day and God bless to you all.
I am not poor. I have a digital television. I don’t watch it. The fact that it has a receiver at all is a non-issue for me. It certainly does have better reception and more channels, but who cares? I won’t watch anything with commercials. I use it as an HD monitor.
I read for entertainment. It’s free with a library card, though I do purchase books.
If you rely that heavily on television, there is an issue in itself. And again, you can always listen to a radio in an emergency. I would welcome the return of dramatic radio.
The reason I want them to continue with the switch is that I want those freqs open to cell phone tech - I wanna be able to make a call stranded in the snow in the mountains with two flat tires. The increase in reception to cell phones will save many more than not having a television will kill.
I am curious- I had some reception issues on the new dtv I installed, so out of curiousity I plugged in an old rabbit-ear I had, and it juiced the dtv signal up fine. Why would you need a new antenna?
ETA:Oh, and no I don’t use it, but anyone wants to play with a new toy…
No, you haven’t. Sorry to rain on your parade, dude.
Well, damn, nearly $20 billion should have been much, much more than enough to buy converter boxes for the relatively small number of people who needed them, right?
QFT. Hell analog signal amplifiers seem to work on DTV in my experiance. The old $20 dollar radioshack amplifier, bit rusty in places, looks a bit odd wired into my shiny modern desktop computer’s dtv usb stick; yet it works.
You’re right, a large part of it does come down to money. But not money in a vacuum, hopefully money that creates jobs and builds infrastructure (something Obama is pushing from a generic standpoint).
Here’s a document I got from Joltin’ Joe’s office: http://lieberman.senate.gov/documents/crs/digitaltv.pdf
It lists the following possibilities:
- Improved wireless internet (including, IIRC, city-wide Wi-Fi, which could benefit all the folks without broadband, and facilitate city-planned measures to roll out wireless net access to lower income folks).
- A specific bandwidth allocation for service-plan free mobile phones (which could also benefit low-income folks).
- 24 MHz of new frequencies for public safety use, meaning police, fire, EMT, etc. Which also benefit people in general. IIRC there is a study on how the use of this frequency band would help first responders get a better signal in dense urban areas, like New York City.
I don’t disagree with you here. I don’t think we should, or realistically could, wait for everyone to adopt new technology. However, I do feel that people should have ample opportunity to adopt the new technology, and I think it is fair to say that if they have been promised a coupon towards said technology, it is unfair to withdraw that offer. That’s effectively what has happened to many people. I think extending the adoption period only is appropriate in this case because of the extenuating circumstances with the coupon program. Otherwise, I’m all for cutting it off now.
Incidentally, these problems are not new and have been largely ignored.
I did not mean to imply this, but rather to indicate that it is increasingly uncommon in homes (as music/entertainment devices more and more frequently do not include radio capabilities) and that it is less valuable a source than TV.
I’m not convinced that sale of the spectrum will necessarily be a positive for taxpayers. Right now, they have a free source of entertainment that is accessed by many people. If we take that away and leave people in the lurch, they haven’t benefited. Perhaps you’re right, though.
I do agree we’re likely to see the crisis as an ongoing issue, but I point it out to help indicate why the coupon program is so important in order to get the most affected individuals to the current technology.
$10, the cost of a Wal-Mart converter minus the coupon, is much more feasible to many families than $50, and $40 can buy quite a bit of food, or sustain cell phone coverage for a month or more (frequently used by the poor due to frequent moves or lack of a permanent residence, and you need a phone if looking for work).
I’m not saying we need to put our heads in the sand about the conversion until we solve all of our other problems. I just favor a delay in order to handle our real problems with the conversion itself and to help people to get what they have been promised.
Congratulations, you’re as petty and immature as people you claim to turn up your nose at. I’m sure you’re very proud of yourself. Go tell all your friends. They’ll be amazed and awestruck at your madz intarwebz debatingz skillz.
The best thing about your comeback was that it perfectly confirmed what I initially suspected based on your tone: for you, it’s all about scoring stupid little partisan points. You hold Obama to a completely different standard than you would someone who was on your team. When called on the thinking behind what you wrote, you have nothing to offer except comparisons to why your behavior is similar to what some other members of the other team once did. It adds nothing to a discussion, and is about as interesting as listening to a tattling seven year old.
To be clear, I could care less if you bitch about Obama. Just try to do it in a non-embarrassing way.
Well, we’ll believe these when we see them. Citywide free wifi in particular has fallen short of promises more often than not in the past.
The budget process doesn’t work that way. The FCC doesn’t get to keep the $20 billion it raises from the auction. Instead, that money goes into the US treasury to pay for Social Security, the Iraq War and auto bailouts, and the FCC has to have money from the Treasury assigned to it each year by the budget process.
Count me in the group that welcomes this delay. There’s channels that are just unwatchable in digital without major antenna tweaking, yet perfectly watchable in analog around here. When analog goes I either lose those channels or have to fix the rotor. Not cheap, and not safe in the winter. It’s on the steep roof.
Well, wouldn’t you agree that there’s sort of a chicken and egg thing here? The bandwidth has to be available first before someone commits to doing anything about it in this economy with credit so uncertain.
And sure, there’s no guarantees.
Goodness me, all that stuff you mention sounds terrible! Why isn’t anyone doing anything about all those things? I’m all a-quiver, I tell you. And it certainly isn’t possible that Obama could be working on plans for those things while one of his aides is thinking about something else. It’s quite literally unthinkable, as I myself am currently thinking about something else.
Maybe some kind of “Vice” President is in order, to deal with all the shit that’s not of cosmic significance. After all, we didn’t elect the guy to run the whole country, right?
I’ll be plenty peeved if he tries to tackle education before curing cancer, I can tell you. Priorities, priorities.
What if we allow people to deduct the cost of a converter, up to $40, from their taxes? Would that option convince you more to keep the current deadline?