"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
news

"David Eduardo" wrote in message
t...

A parallel would be the number of people who in the mid to late 80's into
the 90's built their own computers. There were parts places all over,
magazines filled with ads for cases and fans.... now there is nearly
nothing.


You're kidding, right? Those ads are everywhere. There are probably at
least as many people building their own computers now as there are buying
pre-built ones. In our house, there are exactly three pre-built desktop
machines (old Gateway minisystems I bought for next to nothing to use as
streaming machines). The other 6 desktop machines (mostly towers) are
built from discrete parts chosen for their particular merits. This is done
by most anyone into serious computing. Those that buy machines off the
shelf are usually doing so just to access e-mail and do a bit of web
surfing.

Computer Shopper went from a 300 page book sold everywhere to a standard
size magazine, mostly with new media devices and such. LA had three local
computer magazines, advertising the screwdriver shops and component sellers.
All are gone, and have been for about 4 to 5 years. And the reason is that
almost 100% of the screwdriver and parts shops are gone, leaving Frys and
the big boxes to sell limited lines of easy to install routers and external
hard drives. Mail order places, like my old drive supplier, Dirt Cheap
Drives, are gone by the hundreds. My case source in Buena Park closed a
couple of years ago, and there are fewer and fewer alternatives in new
motherboards and components.

With over half the market now being laptops, most consumers upgrade the box,
not the components. Most systems are warranty-voided by adding anything
beyond memory, so this is done far less than in the past. The days of
overclocking and selecting special components is long-gone as a general
practice because computers have reached speeds where buying the newest chip
makes scant differnece and overclocking is just not worth the risk for most.

I must have built 50 computers going back to the S-100 bus, but quit about 4
years ago when I could get everything I wanted in a laptop. I preobably also
bought 150 CPUs, dozens of tubes of silicone grease, had cabinets filled
with video cards and modems and motherboards... I used to know the different
Asus boards by number... but like most assemblers I know, the pain is not
worth the gain and assembled units are cheaper now than buying the parts
retail. I buy a new laptop every 12 months, and by the time a new one
arrives, the old one is pretty much ready for recycling... and I save lots
of time trying to get parts.

"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
...

"David Eduardo" wrote in message
...
No, only the nutjobs like dxAss and Telamon and Steve refuse to realize
how radio is used today, and the changes the industry has to make to
survive... and that said survival will likely not include AM in the long
run.


Your vision of "radio" is not radio. It's a low power digital 'local'
service that forces everyone to buy new hardware to even make use of it.
Anyone can listen to "radio" on the same equipment they listened to it on
almost 90 years ago.

Nobody has to change any equipment unless they want to.

FM stereo is a success... yet it took 4 years to get the first 100 stations
on the air. Today, we have 1501 HD stations on or building.

"Telamon" wrote in message
news:telamon_spamshield- it today.

Or, the simple answer: there is a huge decline in the number of SW
stations,
and also in SW listeners. Domestic SW, the nicest DX, is all but
disappearing and the quality broadcasters are reducing schedules or
suspending service.

Yeah like you would know.

You are in denial on this, too? How many SW stations did Colombia have in
1967? And how many now? How many total SW hours does the VOA produce today?
1967? How many SW transmitters and what powers and hours did HCJB have in
the 60's vs. today?

Now do the same statistics for FM. Colombia had zero FMs in '67, now 80% of
the listening is to FM, of which there are now more than AMs in the country.
There is a migration from SW to Am to FM. And now to digital.

"Telamon" wrote in message
...
In article ,

But I think you are off the deep end because of your denial of
ratings, inability to see that if there is no listening of conseuence
beyond a certain signal intensity, there must be a truth there, and
your idea that knowing wave and propagation theory is somehow
necessary to understanding that listeners don't tune to weak signals.

Well you don't seem to know what reception is like around here on the
west coast and all you need is a portable radio to find out. Knowledge
of propagation is not necessary. You just keep on making crap up about
how hard or easy it is to pick up a station based on something you read
and misinterpreted on the Internet.

It does not matter what "reception is like here" because we can easily see
what kind of reception generates listening... and, as said before, unless
the signal is very strong, there is no listening generated. And beyond that,
we have the fact that AM generates very little listening under age 45, and
soon it will be "under age 55" and there will be no revenue to support the
band.

"Steve" wrote in message
oups.com...
Don't worry Tardo. Wimax is going to fix your sorry ass for good. Lol.


Guess who is going to provide content in WiMax? Same folks that provide
radio content now!

SFTV_troy wrote:

Brenda Ann wrote:


some larger (orphaning millions of listeners that don't live inside city
grade contours of broadcast stations, and lose their ability to receive
stations that they were previously easily able to receive)

The analog FM is still there. So too are the websites, so rural
listeners can stream them off the internet. Heck, I listen to
stations in my hometown, and I'm currently 1000 miles away, just via
streaming.



Are you assuming rural America has high speed internet? I live 4 miles
outside city limits and there is no DSL and no cable internet. Do you think
one can adequately stream a decent internet feed over a 28k modem
connection?

On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:07:19 GMT, "David Eduardo"
wrote:

Oink!

Eric F. Richards wrote:
SFTV_troy wrote:



Eminently logical. I've already stated this elsewhere, but it's worth
repeating. The Baltimore station has split into 3 sub-channels:
- AOR
- Classic Rock
- Indie Rock


So you've given up any pretense of being an actual user and are outing
yourself as a shill? Most users wouldn't feel the need to change
their alias within 24 hours of first appearing on a mailing list


Most users aren't posting from Google Groups that has a 10 message per
~2 hour limit. I use the second email address in order to get around
that idiotic limitation.

ALSO:

I'm not exactly hiding my identity am I? SFTV_troy.
SFTVratings_troy. It's obvious I'm the same person. ------ If I
truly wanted to hide my identity as you falsely claim, I'd hide myself
better by not using near-identical names. ----- Clearly that was Not
my intent.

first appearing on a mailing list

This isn't a mailing list. This is a Usenet newsgroup. I've been
posting on them since 1988 (rec.arts.startrek, rec.arts.tv), so please
don't compare them to an email list. They have no connection
whatsoever to email.

Steve wrote:
On Sep 30, 11:44 am, SFTV_troy wrote:

Logical. I've already stated this elsewhere, but it's worth
repeating. The Baltimore station has split to 3 sub-channels:
- AOR
- Classic Rock
- Indie Rock


A puny set of choices indeed compared to what internet radio yields.

Look I have no qualms with Internet Radio. I listen to it half-a-day,
every day, at work. BUT it has one serious flaw:

- It doesn't work in the car.

And I spend a LOT of time in my car (roughly 1.5 hours a day), thus I
like to have available to me either Analog or HD Radio to help pass
the time.

"SFTV_troy" wrote in message
oups.com...
Yes true. By the way, DX isn't dead. It moved to the internet, where
you can hear stations as far away as London, Russia, Australia, et
cetera. I hear more distant stations now than I ever did as a
teenager.


some larger (orphaning millions of listeners that don't live inside city
grade contours of broadcast stations, and lose their ability to receive
stations
that they were previously easily able to receive)

The analog FM is still there. So too are the websites, so rural
listeners can stream them off the internet. Heck, I listen to
stations in my hometown, and I'm currently 1000 miles away, just via
streaming.

Streaming is not DX. Also, where do you think these rural listeners are
going to get broadband internet access that would allow them to listen to
these streams? Ain't gonna happen, because nobody is supplying broadband
outside of cities. (hint: satellite internet doesn't handle streaming audio
for beans, since the backhaul is still via telephone modem, and the lag
doesn't allow for enough FEC... )

to larger still (the obsoleting of
literally hundred of millions (possibly even billions) of
currently useful devices (analog TV's (especially portables),
analog radios, turntables, cassette decks, ad inf.).


Yes. Just like when we abandoned horse-drawn carriages, steam
engines, and riverboats. It's called progress... moving from old
technologies to new technologies. Movign from slow or inefficient
technologies to faster, economical technologies.

BTW analog TVs are not dead. I've got a digital tuner attached to
mine, which means the set will die a natural death of old age. It's
not been wasted.



Those things were not abandoned wholesale or all at once. They were phased
out by attrition, nobody forced anyone to buy a horseless carriage. Plus,
there are still working steamboats and horse drawn carriages in use today.

Try connecting one of those set-top boxes to your portable TV at the beach,
or out camping.. I am not happy (nor is anyone else in the situation) with
having a relatively expensive pocket portable TV obsoleted and useless.

And has anyone considered the long term
ecological repercussions of having to dispose
of all these millions of now useless devices?

Trivial compared to the amount of trash generated from food
packaging. By volume I'd estimate a thrown-away VCR or Cassette
player is less than 1% the volume generated by food boxes, plastic
wrap, and containers.



Digital radio is an answer to a problem that doesn't exist,
and is/will create(ing) more problems than it solves.

Actually there is a problem. Young adults and teens are demanding
more variety, and analog radio doesn't have room to grow to meet that
demand (no room to add stations).


Most young people I know don't listen to radio at all. It's not in their
line of thinking. They listen to their mp3 players when they listen at all.
They couldn't care less about radio, and adding more stations won't change
that. Besides, have you checked out what kids listen to now? Almost 100%
rap/hiphop/urban. They don't want choice... they want conformity (as youth
always have.. not with the adult world, but among their peers).