[opendtv] Re: 20050926 Mark's Monday Memo
- From: "John Willkie" <JohnWillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 12:15:36 -0700
amen
John Willkie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Craig Birkmaier" <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 7:05 AM
Subject: [opendtv] Re: 20050926 Mark's Monday Memo
> At 11:16 AM +1200 9/28/05, Barry Wilkins wrote:
> >Well, go on John. Say it anyway. It's always fun. It kind of reminds me
of
> >the movie "Groundhog Day", where Bill Murray says"Well, what if there is
no
> >tomorrow? There wasn't one today" Accordingly, there appears to be no
> >reasonably priced properly performing ATSC receiver today...and tomorrow
> >never comes (so far).
>
> A reliable source in the Nation's capital informs me that he has one
> of these new ATSC STB's, and that it works fine (with a silver sensor
> antenna) in the urban canyons of DC, where lawyers ply the
> politicians with cash for political influence. So ten years after the
> standard was approved, it looks like it can be made to
> work...marginally. We will need to wait and see what these boxes will
> cost. Without a huge order subsidized by the U.S. treasury, it would
> appear that there is no incentive to bring these boxes to market.
>
> For the past few weekends I have been looking at the DTV ads from the
> usual local suspects: Sears, Circuit City, and Best Buy. Each has its
> own unique way of designating whether a set is HD ready or it
> includes an ATSC/Cable tuner. Best Buy calls the integrated sets DCR
> - Digital Cable Ready. Circuit City uses HDTV Monitor and HDTV
> integrated. Looking through all of these ads, the lowest price for
> an integrated set is still above $2,000. There are a few cheaper
> CRT-based sets available, but they are rarely advertised.
>
> The real question one must ask, is whether Joe Sixpack cares about
> any of this. To be certain, if NTSC is turned off, some people will
> be pissed. But the reality is that very few will bother to get a DTV
> set-top box and put up an antenna at any price, including a highly
> subsidized price.
>
> The real question we should be asking is when we will shut down TV
> broadcasting as we know it. Clearly the media - Fox news Channel
> included blew it badly with Katrina. All it takes today to make news
> is for somebody - anybody - to make a wild accusation, and the media
> will fall all over itself reporting these rumors as facts.
>
> The Police Chief of New Orleans resigned yesterday. Given the reality
> of how his organization mishandled the disaster, this seems just. But
> the media focus is on the fact that he spread lies and rumors, which
> the media then reported as news. Today in our local NYTimes paper
> there is story about all of the major misrepresentations of fact that
> the media - TV, radio, newspapers et al - spread after Katrina. I
> guess you could call this a "retraction;" one must question why it
> took a month to get the real facts out, and only then in an article
> buried on page six.
>
> Having lived through at least six hurricanes when I was growing up in
> South Florida in the '60s, I am forced to wonder how the hell we got
> through all of this without the assistance of the Federal Government.
> There were no billion dollar no-bid contracts from FEMA to help with
> clean-up. I got $2-3 an hour to help clean up the neighborhood.
> Within a day or two of the storm I would pile up huge mounds of
> debris - piles 10 feet wide and 3o feet long in front of each house.
> Like magic they would be gone in a day or two. LAst year after
> Francis I put a similar pile in front of my house in Gainesville. It
> too six weeks for the local government agencies to figure out how to
> clean it up, with assistance from FEMA.
>
> With all of those storms in the '60s - several were category 4
> storms, we never suffered any significant destruction of our homes.
> At worse I had to fix some fiberglass screens that were torn by
> flying debris. The only evacuations that took place were the folks
> with homes and apartments on the beach, who would come across the
> bridges and stay a mile away from the worst that the storms could
> dish out. I did see some cars that were sand blasted if left out near
> the beach. The reason that there was little property damage was the
> South Florida Building Code, developed in response to the
> devastations of the big storms in the '30s and '40s. Our house was
> concrete block with an 18" concrete header poured around the top with
> steel straps to hold down the roof trusses. The roof was concrete
> tiles; I think we lost two tiles in one storm when the sustained
> winds topped 160 MPH.
>
> After the intense cycle of storms in the '60s South Florida really
> started to explode, and the South Florida Building Code was abandoned
> because of the high construction costs. The destruction caused by
> Andrew came as no surprise - as the Wolf told the first two little
> pigs, I'll huff and I'll puff til I blow your house down.
>
> So many things have changed in the past fifty years. How the hell did
> we ever survive without big brother to lend a hand?
>
> Regards
> Craig
>
> Regards
> Craig
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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