Going to try to ease back into the swing of things, though there’s still a lot of non-site work in my life right now still going on. But just a few notes to let you know I’m still alive:
1. Good friend and collagist extraordinaire rx has released an eight-minute trailer of his latest magnum opus – a remix-documentary of the 2008 presidential election. rx isn’t a big fan of deadlines (especially those self-imposed), but he tells me the full doc should be ready for public viewing hopefully by the end of this year or early next.
2. The NAB is waving the interference canard again in an attempt to sway the FCC (and Congress, if necessary), not to allow the unlicensed use of analog-TV white-space spectrum once the DTV transition is completed in February. Ample evidence shows that such use will not cause interference – but the NAB begs to disagree, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about this new (and budding) technological advance on spectrum that could be repurposed for anything from spread-spectrum wireless in the home or office to a viable wireless “last-mile third pipe” for broadband access (something all Americans desperately need, whether they recognize it or not yet). In fact, the disingenuous cries of interference from the NAB sound eerily familiar…oh, yeah, it used the same trope to try and squash LPFM. Its blatant warping of scientific fundamentals for political gain was enough eight years ago to sway ignorant Congresscritters into eviscerating the new LPFM service; don’t get fooled again, folks.
3. And speaking of DTV: WTF? The best way FCC Chairman Kevin Martin can think of to “educate the public” about the oncoming DTV transition is to sponsor a NASCAR driver? Outside of the fact that this expenditure, according to the available evidence, is arbitrary and capricious, and the average NASCAR race is only watched by eight of the 300-odd million citizens in this country, the first race FCC-sponsored driver David Gilliand competed in after signing his FCC sponsorship ended in an early crash. It’s pretty emblematic of the FCC’s handling of the DTV transition process in and of itself.
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