You're hitting some bull's eyes, Jim, in reporting on a bunch of "bull" occurring out there. I have two comments, driven from your essay:
1. "It is still possible to operate your car without putting a licence [Br] in some slot to get it to start ..."
This will generate an industry of bypassers and crackers just as the current trend in software is doing. To sell a subscription to a monthly service instead of a one-time payment for a program to run on your off-line computer is the new annoyance for me. I will not do it. There are crack-ops in India and Russia who are performing a service for some of us. A case in point: I bought and paid for a copy of Mathcad 11 years ago, on CD, my computer failed, and I tried to bring it up on the new computer. To activate, an Internet connection needed to be made and it was to a site no longer in existence. Is this not a form of bait and switch? I buy the software under the given agreement of years ago, and now the company will no longer perform according to it, though they have my money.
Apply this trend to road vehicles: the govt or auto-maker or both require a monthly subscription to renew the card that starts your car.
2. "... they have enforced policies of licensure for radio and television broadcasting in defiance of the clear text of the constitution’s first amendment."
The argument is that the AM and FM bands would be hopelessly interfered by stations vying for the same space on the band. I once wrote for an electronics engineering journal, AnalogZone, edited by Paul McGoldrick, who had been in the broadcasting industry including in Italy. His testimony is the response to the above objection, in Broadcast Engineering, Oct 1, 2005, in an article titled "Anarchy for the Masses":
Maybe it's about time to start a movement to get the government to butt out of allocating broadcast licenses. Let's leave it to the market.
Chaos, right? Absolutely not. During the late 1970s, I watched just such a situation unfold. At that time, my hottest market was Italy, where video piracy went from nothing to a point where every VHF/UHF channel was filled in only a few months. Quite often the pirate used a Sony U-matic connected directly to a modulator that fed an antenna on a residential roof. Once you found a clear channel in your city, you had to stay on the air 24/7, or someone else would grab it. Most of the material was porn, and the whole thing was a rebellion about the lousy programming that the state broadcaster had fobbed off on the public for many years. Viewers had no alternatives to Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) unless they happened to live in an area where they could pick up a French or Swiss transmitter.
At first, RAI waged war on these people with the relevant Italian Ministry, tracking down the stations and seizing their paltry equipment in attempts to keep the pirates off the air. They would even steal RAI's channels at night when the network shut down. Policing was impossible as the pirates multiplied day after day. At the zenith, you could find something on every channel in both Milan and Rome. RAI attempted to respond by airing 24/7 and with a lot more raunchy shows to try to keep its audience.
The better pirates wanted more professional equipment to improve their signal quality and broaden their coverage, and it was a broadcast equipment manufacturer's dream market. Some of the stations were even making their own programs — the most popular being saucy game shows. And then the almost unbelievable happened: the creation of the first pirate TV network throughout Italy. It was called Canale Cinque and was owned by Silvio Berlusconi, now prime minister. To move from an unlicensed pirate to running a country is like a story straight out of an opera.
Later on, I waited three days in a Milan hotel, most of the time in the bar, for Berlusconi to grant my boss and me an audience — which he finally did.
The piracy spawned an incredible VHF/UHF TV transmitter industry in Italy, now major competition in some sectors for U.S.-based manufacturers. Thus, the continuing presence on the floor of NAB.
So anarchy can work — in fact, I'm tempted to say anarchy always works. Out of the chaos comes order, as with everything. I would be in favor of such a move to change the broadcasting landscape, and I'm sure the FCC could be overwhelmed within months. The FCC is currently ignoring a large number of VHF/FM pirates and only seems to move slowly when a license holder complains of interference.
Maybe now really is the time to build that transmitter in the garage that has been in my mind's eye for years.
USA Today is the opposite of everything my public elementary school taught me… ingrained in me, with the pledge of allegiance - it viscerally conflicts with everything our public schools taught. Politicians are confused temp workers. Yuck!🤮
I regret that I don’t understand what you’ve written here. Perhaps the “USA Today” newspaper is on your mind? I don’t recall any mention of them in my present essay.
The fellow who wrote the pledge of allegiance was a socialist. He was not a Christian though he pretended to be one. You might want to look into his ideas before encouraging any other school children to pledge their allegiance to an artefact of human hands. The wikipedia essay approved by the demon worshippers in the cia is not a terrible resource with respect to knowing a few things about him and his terrible ideas.
Politicians are not confused, friend. They know what they are doing. They know they serve evil. They are enthusiastic about the millions and millions of dollars they receive and the trillions and trillions of dollars they claim to control. They are eager to sell your children into servitude. They will tell you loudly, even the so-called “good” ones like Thomas Massie, that your children are born owing some portion of the nationalist socialist debt the congress pretends is owed by the American people. You may feel they are “temp workers” but it is hard to see how Nancy Pelosi, say, or Chuck Schumer, have had difficulty staying in office by stealing one election after another.
Anyway, I agree with your sense of disgust about them.
"In Foggy Bottom you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
You're hitting some bull's eyes, Jim, in reporting on a bunch of "bull" occurring out there. I have two comments, driven from your essay:
1. "It is still possible to operate your car without putting a licence [Br] in some slot to get it to start ..."
This will generate an industry of bypassers and crackers just as the current trend in software is doing. To sell a subscription to a monthly service instead of a one-time payment for a program to run on your off-line computer is the new annoyance for me. I will not do it. There are crack-ops in India and Russia who are performing a service for some of us. A case in point: I bought and paid for a copy of Mathcad 11 years ago, on CD, my computer failed, and I tried to bring it up on the new computer. To activate, an Internet connection needed to be made and it was to a site no longer in existence. Is this not a form of bait and switch? I buy the software under the given agreement of years ago, and now the company will no longer perform according to it, though they have my money.
Apply this trend to road vehicles: the govt or auto-maker or both require a monthly subscription to renew the card that starts your car.
2. "... they have enforced policies of licensure for radio and television broadcasting in defiance of the clear text of the constitution’s first amendment."
The argument is that the AM and FM bands would be hopelessly interfered by stations vying for the same space on the band. I once wrote for an electronics engineering journal, AnalogZone, edited by Paul McGoldrick, who had been in the broadcasting industry including in Italy. His testimony is the response to the above objection, in Broadcast Engineering, Oct 1, 2005, in an article titled "Anarchy for the Masses":
Maybe it's about time to start a movement to get the government to butt out of allocating broadcast licenses. Let's leave it to the market.
Chaos, right? Absolutely not. During the late 1970s, I watched just such a situation unfold. At that time, my hottest market was Italy, where video piracy went from nothing to a point where every VHF/UHF channel was filled in only a few months. Quite often the pirate used a Sony U-matic connected directly to a modulator that fed an antenna on a residential roof. Once you found a clear channel in your city, you had to stay on the air 24/7, or someone else would grab it. Most of the material was porn, and the whole thing was a rebellion about the lousy programming that the state broadcaster had fobbed off on the public for many years. Viewers had no alternatives to Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) unless they happened to live in an area where they could pick up a French or Swiss transmitter.
At first, RAI waged war on these people with the relevant Italian Ministry, tracking down the stations and seizing their paltry equipment in attempts to keep the pirates off the air. They would even steal RAI's channels at night when the network shut down. Policing was impossible as the pirates multiplied day after day. At the zenith, you could find something on every channel in both Milan and Rome. RAI attempted to respond by airing 24/7 and with a lot more raunchy shows to try to keep its audience.
The better pirates wanted more professional equipment to improve their signal quality and broaden their coverage, and it was a broadcast equipment manufacturer's dream market. Some of the stations were even making their own programs — the most popular being saucy game shows. And then the almost unbelievable happened: the creation of the first pirate TV network throughout Italy. It was called Canale Cinque and was owned by Silvio Berlusconi, now prime minister. To move from an unlicensed pirate to running a country is like a story straight out of an opera.
Later on, I waited three days in a Milan hotel, most of the time in the bar, for Berlusconi to grant my boss and me an audience — which he finally did.
The piracy spawned an incredible VHF/UHF TV transmitter industry in Italy, now major competition in some sectors for U.S.-based manufacturers. Thus, the continuing presence on the floor of NAB.
So anarchy can work — in fact, I'm tempted to say anarchy always works. Out of the chaos comes order, as with everything. I would be in favor of such a move to change the broadcasting landscape, and I'm sure the FCC could be overwhelmed within months. The FCC is currently ignoring a large number of VHF/FM pirates and only seems to move slowly when a license holder complains of interference.
Maybe now really is the time to build that transmitter in the garage that has been in my mind's eye for years.
_______________________________
Thank you for your meaningful words and for writing your stuff
Love it.
Thank you for your kind words and for reading my stuff.
Excellent Article!
Thank you for your kind words and for reading my stuff.
USA Today is the opposite of everything my public elementary school taught me… ingrained in me, with the pledge of allegiance - it viscerally conflicts with everything our public schools taught. Politicians are confused temp workers. Yuck!🤮
I regret that I don’t understand what you’ve written here. Perhaps the “USA Today” newspaper is on your mind? I don’t recall any mention of them in my present essay.
The fellow who wrote the pledge of allegiance was a socialist. He was not a Christian though he pretended to be one. You might want to look into his ideas before encouraging any other school children to pledge their allegiance to an artefact of human hands. The wikipedia essay approved by the demon worshippers in the cia is not a terrible resource with respect to knowing a few things about him and his terrible ideas.
Politicians are not confused, friend. They know what they are doing. They know they serve evil. They are enthusiastic about the millions and millions of dollars they receive and the trillions and trillions of dollars they claim to control. They are eager to sell your children into servitude. They will tell you loudly, even the so-called “good” ones like Thomas Massie, that your children are born owing some portion of the nationalist socialist debt the congress pretends is owed by the American people. You may feel they are “temp workers” but it is hard to see how Nancy Pelosi, say, or Chuck Schumer, have had difficulty staying in office by stealing one election after another.
Anyway, I agree with your sense of disgust about them.