O/T Are we going backwards thinking its foward!

I tell my friends who make crap of my old tractors that they realy screwed up putting electric starters an rubber tires on tractors.

I was helping a auctioneer a few years ago, and got stuck for starting a big consel color tv for a dollar. I brought it home and my youngest son wanted to know where the remote was, and how do you change channels without a remote. My coment was simply just ask your older sister? She spent many hrs trying to convince mom and dad that the show that was on was her favorite rather than her having to get up and change it.

One night after a EMS meeting I stayed around to clean up a bit with my seven year old son. It was a real cold night,and the wind was wild. The pagers went off and as I left with the rig I told my son that to watch TV, and if it took me along time to call his uncle to take him home. When I got back to the station a couple hrs later I noticed a tear in the sons eye. I asked why he did not call his uncle? As another tear formed in his eye he said how--with that?. A old rotary phone.

I have to say that those were the good ol days when you used that type of phone. You could talk to a human being, and they spoke english, and seldom played phone tag after a machine answers, and of course they will call you back sometime. Yet as I think back to when there were no phones / TV / electricity---well we all pretty much think alike.

The info that I read said that those vouchers/coupons, will only be good for 90 days, so you have to call or send for them on time and use them on time or it will cost you more money.

We're going to get two for our TV sets, even though we might end up getting one new TV as ours is getting old.

Nobody can tell me, but I think we'll be able to still use our big antenna along with the converter box. The HD/digital antennas in the store look exactly like the one we have.

DTV will free up frequencies that should have been moved years ago. With the coming of Cell Phones and the WiMax for the computer, we need the bandwidth. I wonder how many people are still using wires for their phones.

You will be able to get two vouchers, each for $40.00 to help offset the cost of the DTV conversion.

Remember when they began to send color TV signals over the air? And they were forced to continue to broadcast the Black and White?

Do you remember when all TV's were forced to included UHF besides the typical VHF?

Do you remember when they mandated defrosters in ALL cars?

Boy is change difficult but I sure wouldn't enjoy life as much if it didn't occur.

Cars today are more complex and lighter because they have to meet much more stringent emission and mileage requirements. I don't think anyone wants a car that gets 12 mpg today, and emissions controls have helped improve air quality in the major cities.

Sure, your 68 year old tractor works perfectly good today, but I'll bet it isn't being used the same as it was new. Back when it was new, it might have been the only tractor on a full size family farm. Would somebody today try to make a living farming with just that one tractor? I doubt it.

Much of the planned obsolesence is maddening: computers that you throw away after two or three years is a good example. But don't expect technology to stand still during your lifetime. Even the Amish adopt "new" technology from time to time.

Blame fuel economy for getting rid of the old steel bumpers - lighter cars get better fuel economy, hence the move to lighter bumpers (and everything else).

Broadcast TV is going to a digital format, not high definition (HD). If you watch broadcast TV, all you'll need is an adapter box to convert the digital format to analog. Should be a relatively small expense. Satellite TV (Dish & DirectTV) and most cable systems are already digital, and there will be no changes needed.

Keith

Keith

If you buy DVD's, start getting ready to store them alongside your 8 track and VHS tapes. Blue Ray is on its way to becoming the new industry standard.

Full-throttle capitalism requires an ever expanding market. The interests of the owners of the means of production are never served by producing goods that last a long time. In the 50's and 60's, if I remember correctly, there was a much greater emphasis on style than there is today. Perfectly good cars were rendered obsolete because they were visibly old style.

Today, technology has largely replaced style as the force creating obsolescence. It's less transparently arbitrary than style; many car buyers could see that higher tail fins, or oval turn signal lights rather than round, conferred no real advantage in what a car was basically for. DVD's, on the other hand, have enormous capabilities over VHS tapes.

The real beauty of technological advance as a force of obsolescence, however, is that it makes obsolescence a matter of function rather than a matter of taste. You used to be able to keep an old car running for decades for far less than the cost of buying a new one, but that's often not even an option with many categories of today's consumer goods. For example, unless your computer can do everything you need within your own four walls, it doesn't matter whether its performance and features are all you need. In a relatively short time it will be essentially unable to connect with the outside world.

If you think this situation is going to self-correct any time soon, I'd say don't hold your breath. Multi-national corporations are the true rulers of this country (as they have been in Japan for decades); politicians are quickly becoming paid figureheads whose function is to provide a semblence of legitimacy for laws that benefit corporations rather than citizens. Start watching for new laws that make exposure to advertising mandatory in some circumstances. They will be represented as protecting your freedom of choice under the First Amendment. You might think I'm an alarmist, or even a lunatic. You don't have to accept what I'm saying, though---just keep watching.

Happy New Year, though, Stan

The rest are being auctioned off to be used for wireless networking, cell phones, or other such commercial services.

Either you will have to pay for tuner boxes on your cable, or the cable co will have to and raise their rates enough to cover the cost - so you will pay either way.

Now, what happens to all our VCRs & DVD recorders? They come with analog tuners. Attaching a digital box is cumbersome at best, setting recordings is difficult.

They have been talking about TVs for a while, that's fine, folks are thinking about it.

But, we will be landfilling 95% of our VCRs and then probably buying a DVD digital recorder. So, we can landfill allt he VHS tapes as well.

What good are one or 2 converter boxes at 1/2 (inflated) price from the govt? We all have 2-3 TVs, 1-2 VCRs in our houses.

Toss it all out, ging to be a big spending spree, won't be able to find a TV or recorder to buy next Nov through April, won't be any sales needed either, pay fullprice.

This is going to hit people a lot harder than they realize.

--->Paul

http://dtvfacts.com/digital-tv-facts-for-satellite-viewers/