Digital TV Transition

On 10 June my TV claimed I could receive 19 over the air analog channels, and 20 over the air digital channels.
At around 9.00 PM on 12 June, my TV claimed I could receive 8 over the air analog channels, and 9 over the air digital channels.

Of the analog channels, one was a notice from dish network advising me to get a new smartt card to continue watching the channel. A second analog channel was one explaining how to isntall, and configure convertor boxes, digital TV, and your VCR and analog TV to the convertor box. Angel Network, Univision, and the like comprised the rest of the analog channels. (All of them are either low power, or repeater stations.)

So what happened to the other eleven digital stations? What happened to the analog stations that were not digital on the tenth, and are neither low power, nor repeaters stations.

Turns out that with digital broadcasting, the transmitters are also broadcasting at a lower power. Furthermore, once propagation effects kick in, coverage is much smaller than with analog transmission.

I got rid of cable a couple of months ago. (More precisely, I requested cable TV service to be terminated. The cable company claims that they did so. My bill from them --- which is for Internet service --- appears to confirm that position. However, I can still pick up roughly 70 cable channels, if I connect the TV to the wall outlet. I discovered this trying to figure out why my talking VCR wasn't working properly. It was still connected to the cable wall outlet. I had never connected it to a cable box.)

Google and Microsoft

Microsoft and Google are equally maleficent

The difference is that Google admits that they are maleficent. That simply means that Google is more self-aware than Microsoft.

In an ideal world, both organisations would release source code for all software they develop, under the GNU Affero General Public License 3.0, for the simple reason that that is the most ethical software license that is in common use.

Password strength

I got a smartphone, so I could keep up with email, without being tied to my desk.

Lo and behold, it doesn't support Unicode.

Which means that options are either to not use the phone for checking email, IM,and the like, or changing my passwords to something that is pathetically weak.

Both customer service, and level 1 tech support, and level 2 tech support didn't even know what Unicode was, much less how to switch to it. Level 3 tech support said it isn't available. However, if I was a programmer, I might be able to write a program to work around that limitation,but I'd still would have to deal with Microsoft's design flaws.

So, my options are to not use the smartphone for email, IM, and texting, or to change my passwords from my usual A]PᚑᚒᚓσδϐᏬשب@15ᚔᚕ6, to the pathetically insecure US-ANSI character set.

If Samsung were a two bit mom and pop company, their monolingualism might be understandable. But since their website is in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, English, Persian, Russian, Turkish, amongst other languages, the lack of Unicode support in their phones is utterly inexcusable.

Microsoft has repeatedly proven itself to be linguistically challenged, barely capable of supporting US English, and is a bastion of illiteracy. (Literacy is defined as the ability to read, write, and speak fluently five different languages.)

Geneology

On Saturday I wandered into a store that sold Scottish things. I was asked if I knew what clan I was with. All I could remember was that it was a sept of one of the major clans. Several years ago I blogged about my genealogical research. Needless to say, I've forgotten what my findings were, and I can't find that specific blog. :(

Switching email accounts

I decided to try out Yahoo's email service.

Instead of gradually adding contacts, I decided to try them from my existing account.

Two hours later, I'm still watching the import contacts thing spinning,

Four hours later I give up Yahoo mail as an "also ran".

Can you drink the Kool Aid?

MonaVie Acai Juice is merely one of a plethora of beverages designed to exploit people in both the third world and first world.

But is functional illiteracy a requirement for being a distributor for that, or any other MLM flopportunity?

Going by the comments to that Newsweek story, the answer appears to be a resounding "yes".

Why switch to FLOSS: A Poem

I don't know what Danny B's license/copyright policy is, so I'll just give the URL to his the poem.


http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20080729154916498&title=Do%20It%20Gradually&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=715304#c715409

The last couplet says it all:

It's so liberating to escape from the trap,
software Freedom is yours, like a gift to unwrap.