Keep in mind more then a few areas of the country there's no internet or cell service. So even if people in these areas wanted to pay 120x's more to stream TV offerings they wouldn't be able to. In a few areas it may be the only TV available. Of all the stuff the U.S. budget waste money on this has to be the one which gives taxpayers the biggest bang for their buck.
The wife and I watch 100's of PBS programs and specials each year. Currently we're following 'Father Brown', 'Death In Paradise' and 'Doc Martin' each week. Who can deny 'Frontline' also does an outstanding job. I also occasionally tune in to 'France 24' on WLVT's 2nd channel. A great source for international news mostly ignored by nearly every other news organization.
Need more reasons why the government needs to continue funding PBS?
I love these nature videos where animals are COT going about their daily activities.
Don't you?
I'm not certain why this 2011 clip of Jack Black singing the national anthem before a L.A. Sparks basketball game has gone viral once again. But it has with some 3.3+ million views since it was first posted. One thing can be said, Jack has one fine set of pipes.
Here's another 3.3 million plus viewed ONE CONTINUOUS TAKE video making it's return to the viral stage. This one is from 2013 featuring dancers strutting their stuff to Herb Albert's alternate slicked up version of 'Puttin' on the Ritz'.
Finally I'll leave you with this unusual video of 'Twisted Sister' from 1984. It has a surprising 109+ million views. This is not one which was normally played on the MTV back in it's heydays because of it's length (6 minutes 31 seconds). Here is the extended version of "We're Not Gonna Take it"
I grew up with this kind of stuff and I turned out just fine.
Well maybe, except my unexpected outbursts for no reason at all!
When the electric goes off.
TV ads take too long,
When the birds chirp too loud out my window.
When leaves blow in my yard.
When I'm not the only one shining in a group of people.
When.. Never mind..
Now I'm just starting to get pissed off about being pissed off.
That's normal.. right?
:-)
"Biotech company Moderna has shared findings that its coronavirus vaccine offered trial participants immunity up to three months after the second jab."
That doesn't sound too promising. After the first jab (70% effective) people must wait 28 days for the 2nd jab reported to be 95% effective. Seems to me there's lots of opportunity for the virus to infect somebody in between or possibly beyond the 3 or 4 months of protection.
There's been absolutely no research if someone could be given a second round past this time period On top of this we can't be 100% certain what all the unknown side effects might be till many millions are inoculated.
It seems to me the chances of going completely back to normal isn't exactly encouraging. Hopefully researchers can come up with a longer lasting vaccine if we're going to truly get a handle on this strain of virus.
"TUESDAY, Nov. 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) – At least three new COVID-19 vaccine candidates are already in the pipeline, with a roll-out expected early in the new year. But on Monday, experts attending a meeting of an advisory committee to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stressed that Americans who get a shot shouldn't be surprised if they feel under the weather for a few days afterwards...
Already, some volunteers in trials of candidate vaccines from drug companies Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca have reported flu-like symptoms after immunization. And experts worry that those reports might keep people away from vaccination, or from required second doses."
Regardless, it's better then nothing so I intend to get the vaccine as soon as it becomes available.
My very first computer was a TRS-80 back in the late 70's. The name is an abbreviation of Tandy/RadioShack, Z80 microprocessor. Very crude by today's standards. All you got was a 64K memory to work with (smaller then any mp3). You hooked it up to the antenna on your TV since there was no such thing as a monitor at the time.
Owning this thing meant you had to do most of any kind of programming yourself in 'Basic A+'. Then you hooked up the audio jacks to a cassette recorder to save the software program you composed. If you didn't anything you did was completely lost. I learned early on you had to save at least 3 copies because almost all the time reloading it didn't work due to different tape speeds the recorder was prone to.
My next step up had me acquiring a larger computer.
A telephone modem. Then signing up for AOL
Logging in went like this (only if all went well).
Users would pay a monthly fee to dial up a 1-800 number and be limited to so many minutes a month. You had to carefully monitor yourself or you'd be billed extra charges. In fact you could be in the middle of the something and the service would without warning simply disconnect. By being billed, I mean "billed". They did take charge cards over the internet at that time. AND.. the worst problem of all nobody could pick up or use the telephone while the computer was connected. So we got a second line just for the computer,
Nearly every program I was able to download came from what were known as local 'billboards' you'd dial separately from the one AOL provided. These were where someone would offer use of their home computer across their personal telephone line to others to exchange files. Some charged most were happy with one upload for every two you downloaded. These programs were very simplistic. Certainly no music or graphics at he time. Most were basic pixilated games.
Then I moved to 'CompuServe".
Also a dialup but with greater offerings.
Same monetary conditions applied.
1989
All of these were long before we ever heard of hackers.
Hence had no need to install virus protection.
Early on there was no such thing as a search engine. We'd buy monthly magazines to find web addresses.
Much has changed over the years, some of it for the worse. Webpages have become memory and graphically intensive. Annoying auto-playing videos, popups and countless ads have now become the norm. It's become so commercialized one has to wade through all the garbage to even get to why they came there in the first place. However I could have never once imagined how one day I could do nearly all my banking and shopping online using my credit card. So that's a good thing progress has given us.
Point is...
I've been around computers since nearly the beginning. I've created on my own a huge spreadsheet (complete with macros) in Excel. It gives me more information then one could imagine. It contains all my billings, checks, utility expenses and budgets since 2004. Other spread sheets are for my home inventory, car records, telephones/addresses, grocery list and a more. This computer has stored over 40,000 mp3's, family photos and gigabytes of videos and more. Over the last 30 years it's still amazes me how far computers have come. So too how inexpensive they've become.
There is a couple of things I learned over the past 30 years or so. (1) Try to avoid storing anything in "the cloud" when possible (some programs require it). (2) Backup, backup, backup. Then backup again on two other hard drives, with three different formats. (3) Ignore software that nags for updates. They are all about getting information rather then improving. If software works don't do it. If it's not broken it doesn't need fixing. I haven't updated my Windows for 3 years and have yet to have a problem. Of course some of these apps do it without your knowledge or permission anyway. (4) Hover the mouse over a link or examine it's properties before clicking. No matter what it says doesn't mean it's going there. Much like the spoofed phone ID's when getting a call. (5) Don't feed the trolls. Block them. Ignore them.
