Digital Signal Hostage Crisis Averted – Not Over

Nightline, or ABC News Nightline is a late-night hard and soft news program broadcast by ABC in the United States. The program had its beginnings on November 8, 1979, just 4 days after the Iran hostage crisis started. ABC News president Roone Arledge felt the best way to compete against NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was to update Americans on the latest news from Iran. Caption Credit: Wikipedia Image Credit: Overflowrooms.com

Digital Signal Hostage Crisis Averted – Not Over

The House of Representatives, yesterday, did not muster enough votes to place the launch to the conversion of television broadcasting from analog signal to digital signal in a delay.

The proposal on the House floor was designed to delay (hold hostage) the conversion date by four months (from Feb. 17, 2009 to June 17, 2009).

Delaying the transition would cost public broadcasters $22 million, the PBS system chief, Paula Kerger, estimated on Monday.

The National Association of Broadcasters had not taken a position on extending the deadline. The TV stations don't want to suddenly alienate and lose viewers, but they've also sunk money into preparing for the Feb. 17 transition.

Americans have had about one year to prepare for this digital signal conversion. With this vote, our broadcast standards conversion will not be held hostage here in Carter’s Second Term.

We have averted a Converter Box/Digital Signal conversion hostage crisis, but hope still looms - proponents of the delay are hopeful that the House can take up the issue again next week (on behalf of President Barack Obama) and take a vote for a conversion delay a second time with a simple majority decision.

Consumers can apply for a coupon at dtv2009.gov or call 1-888-DTV2009. Many converter boxes have sold out, according to the NTIA’s official list. However, I know digital converter boxes are still in stock. I was at the Target store in Huntington Beach over the weekend and they had plenty. Caption & Image Credit: gadgetress.freedomblogging.com

This excerpted and edited from the San Francisco Chronicle -

House vote keeps digital TV deadline, for now
Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer - Thursday, January 29, 2009

Despite a unanimous vote by the U.S. Senate to delay the Feb. 17 deadline to transition to digital television, the changeover will proceed as planned after a vote Wednesday by the House of Representatives.

The House voted 258-168 in favor of a four-month delay, but the measure fell 26 votes short of the necessary two-thirds margin for passage. The Senate voted Monday to delay the transition to June 12, fearing that an estimated 6.5 million TV households would be unprepared for the shift from analog TV.
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The two-thirds vote was required because the bill was fast-tracked on the House's suspension calendar.

Viewers who use sets with antenna to pull in the old analog signal will need to buy a TV with a digital tuner, purchase a converter box or upgrade to a pay TV service.
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President Obama urged a delay earlier this month. Republicans were largely opposed to the delay, saying it would further confuse consumers and would cost broadcasters millions to keep broadcasting in analog. They also worried about public safety agencies who were set to take over parts of the spectrum freed up by moving to more efficient digital airwaves.

"The bill is a solution looking for a problem," said Joe Barton of Texas before the vote. He is the top Republican on the House Commerce Committee.

Congress allocated more spectrum to broadcasters in 1996 so they could create digital broadcast channels. In 2005, legislators chose the deadline of Feb. 17 to free up spectrum for emergency services and advanced wireless communications. The transition also allows broadcasters to create multiple digital channels, including high-definition feeds.
Reference Here>>

With this delay/hostage crisis situation being placed on ice, at least temporally, don’t look for a revival of the once popular ABC NEWS program, Nightline, soon.

Day Two Of Obama's Digital Signal Hostage Crisis

This whole television transition is one big bloated boondoggle. These stores and the converter box makers scored with this one. For one, the coupons are good only with stand-alone devices that will convert the signals and not for multi-purpose devices like VCRs, televisions, etc. that build in a converter. Two, television broadcasters don’t need to pay a penny for their broadcast licenses. Three, the converters are expected to cost $75 or more. Four, the converter boxes don’t even include a V-chip (this was a missed opportunity to get a V-chip in every home). There is more to complain about, but I’ll spare myself the time and effort. Caption & Image Credit: Reports From My Nanocosm

Day Two Of Obama's Digital Signal Hostage Crisis

We are in the middle of a Converter Box/Digital Signal conversion hostage crisis!

Yes, that is right, the NEW Carter Administration (the Obama 44th Presidency) has it’s first hostage situation and it was created by a request from the office of the President Barack Obama.

The reason given for the delay approved for by the Senate in all digital broadcast conversion was that the FCC ran out of money to fund its $40.00 converter coupon give-away program which would allow those people who receive their television signal through the general broadcast method (without Cable or Satellite Dish) to receive and decode the new digital signal.

What may be more to the truth, Barack Obama wants to make sure all citizens under his control will be able to see the news he and his administration creates as they meddle with our capitalistic based economy in a really big socialistic way.

I don’t generally shop in Wal*Mart (ruthless and toothless); however the converter box cost $10 after the coupon ($50 retail price). That beat the $65 charged by Radio Shack for a no brand item. The nice thing I found out about this box is that it includes a V-Chip intended to let parents filter out inappropriate content from their youngsters. It is likely that most people who rely on the government coupons to purchase a converter box will not have televisions built since 2000 when the V-Chip was mandated. The program is still a boondoggle, just not as big as I had previously made it out to be. Caption & Image Credit: Reports From My Nanocosm

This excerpted and edited from the Sacramento Bee -

Senate approves four-month delay in digital TV conversion
Sacramento Bee via Associated Press - Published: Monday, Jan. 26, 2009

The Senate today approved a four-month delay in digital TV conversion.
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The latest estimate is that more than 6.5 million households are not prepared for the switch.

The National Association of Broadcasters had not taken a position on extending the deadline. The TV stations don't want to suddenly alienate and lose viewers, but they've also sunk money into preparing for the Feb. 17 transition.

Delaying the transition would cost public broadcasters $22 million, the PBS system chief estimated on Monday. The stations will face increased power charges to maintain over-the-air broadcast signals, said Paula Kerger, president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting System.
Reference Here>>

Nightline, or ABC News Nightline is a late-night hard and soft news program broadcast by ABC in the United States. The program had its beginnings on November 8, 1979, just 4 days after the Iran hostage crisis started. ABC News president Roone Arledge felt the best way to compete against NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was to update Americans on the latest news from Iran. Caption Credit: Wikipedia Image Credit: Overflowrooms.com

Americans have had about one year to prepare for this digital signal conversion so now our broadcast standards, well, are being held hostage on only the sixth day (yesterday) here in Carter’s Second Term.

We are in the middle of a Converter Box/Digital Signal conversion hostage crisis!

Can a new edition of Nightline evening news program be around the corner?

Microbe Petrol For Better Living

Better biofuel: Stephen del Cardayre, a biochemist and LS9's vice president for research and development. Image Credit: Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover

Microbe Petrol For Better Living

What would happen if technology could deliver a renewable way of creating gasoline in relative minutes as opposed to the millions and millions of years it takes to create the base of gasoline we pump out of the ground (you know, the type that comes from dinosaur remains?

Well, if companies like LS9 and Amyris Biotechnologies have their way, we all will be pumping gas into our tanks that is created through having bacteria make hydrocarbons.

If this technology conversion can be made viable, it would lend a new interpretation to the expression – “Man, that car is SICK!”

This excerpted from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review -

Making Gasoline from Bacteria
A biotech startup wants to coax fuels from engineered microbes.
By Neil Savage, Technology Review - Wednesday, August 01, 2007

The biofuel of the future could well be gasoline. That's the hope of one biotech startup that on Monday described for the first time how it is coaxing bacteria into producing hydrocarbons that could be processed into fuels like those made from petroleum.

LS9, a company based in San Carlos, CA, and founded by geneticist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, and plant biologist Chris Somerville, of Stanford University, had previously said that it was working on what it calls "renewable petroleum." But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly about what it has accomplished: it has genetically engineered various bacteria, including E. coli, to custom-produce hydrocarbon chains.

E. coli - Image Credit: uni-heidelberg.de

To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you're left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel.

"I am very impressed with what they're doing," says James Collins, codirector of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. He calls the company's use of synthetic biology and systems biology to engineer hydrocarbon-producing bacteria "cutting edge."

In some cases, LS9's researchers used standard recombinant DNA techniques to insert genes into the microbes. In other cases, they redesigned known genes with a computer and synthesized them. The resulting modified bacteria make and excrete hydrocarbon molecules that are the length and molecular structure the company desires.

Stephen del Cardayre, a biochemist and LS9's vice president for research and development, says the company can make hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules. The process can yield crude oil without the contaminating sulfur that much petroleum out of the ground contains. The crude, in turn, would go to a standard refinery to be processed into automotive fuel, jet fuel, diesel fuel, or any other petroleum product that someone wanted to make.

Next year LS9 will build a pilot plant in California to test and perfect the process, and the company hopes to be selling improved biodiesel and providing synthetic biocrudes to refineries for further processing within three to five years. (See "Building Better Biofuels.")

But LS9 isn't the only company in this game. Amyris Biotechnologies, of Emeryville, CA, is also using genes from plants and animals to make microbes produce designer fuels. Neil Renninger, senior vice president of development and one of the company's cofounders, says that Amyris has also created bacteria capable of supplying renewable hydrocarbon-based fuels. The main difference between the companies, Renninger says, is that while LS9 is working on a biocrude that would be processed in a refinery, Amyris is working on directly producing fuels that would need little or no further processing.
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LS9's current work uses sugar derived from corn kernels as the food source for the bacteria--the same source used by ethanol-producing yeast. To produce greater volumes of fuel, and to not have energy competing with food, both approaches will need to use cellulosic biomass, such as switchgrass, as the feedstock. Del Cardayre estimates that cellulosic biomass could produce about 2,000 gallons of renewable petroleum per acre.

Producing hydrocarbon fuels is more efficient than producing ethanol, del Cardayre adds, because the former packs about 30 percent more energy per gallon. And it takes less energy to produce, too. The ethanol produced by yeast needs to be distilled to remove the water, so ethanol production requires 65 percent more energy than hydrocarbon production does.

The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal of replacing 30 percent of current petroleum use with fuels from renewable biological sources by 2030, and del Cardayre says he feels that's easily achievable.

Reference Here>>