Amen!
My wife and I absolutely forbid anyone from having a video camera at our wedding. It always seemed that when people watched the videos they always noticed things that went wrong (ex: someone not standing in the right place). As far as we remember, our wedding was perfect.

Amen,

If people want to get all religious about things, one of the worst sins has to be willful ignorance.

This happens all of the time. Salaries for county employees are posted here by the local newspaper every year. And I do mean individual employees (by name - not just position).

So, any expectation of restraint by others in making public information easily available is delusional. If there is money to be made, it will happen.

Yes, the user will have to pick the antenna appropriate for their situation. If your antenna didn't receive UHF before, it will need to now. But there is nothing new here. You had to pick the antenna appropriate for your situation when the stations were analog as well.

Like I said before:
"Just look up your local stations and pick an antenna based on band(s) and distance."

I guess I could add pick it based on direction as well. In my case, all of the transmitters were in the same general direction and they were nearby. So, I used low gain antennas with a broad reception path.

I don't think the power reductions are much of a factor. And yes, the maximum effective radiated power has been reduced. For example, on UHF from 5000kW to 1000kW. But that is 5000kW pep vs 1000kW avg. So, that difference is much smaller than it looks on first inspection.

Even with my low gain antennas, I am astounded at the stations I can pick up. Any loss in broadcaster output power seems to be more than made up in the reduced signal to noise ratio requirements.

It is true that in fringe conditions you will probably get a good picture or no picture. Where with analog you might have gotten a noisy but usable picture.

Concerning preamps. if you buy a good preamplifier (mine is a winegard that is mounted up at the antenna) it really can help. My favorite channel changed from unwatchable to a good rock solid picture.

My problem with the marketing is the following:
Companies market these antennas implying there is something different about digital TV signals and the newer antennas are designed for these differences. But, the reality is that the radio signal really doesn't care whether the antenna was marketed as a digital TV antenna or not. The antenna is designed to capture radio waves and it does. The radio waves themselves are no different than before. It is the information that they carry that has changed.

To answer your question about digital TV antennas:
Despite the marketing implications, there really is nothing different about antennas for Digital TV. The encoding is not important. The frequency is the main factor and that has not changed substantially. Most digital TV stations are on the UHF band around where I live. So, if you are lucky, you can get by with just a simple UHF antenna if the stations are nearby.

Here is where you can find your nearby stations:
http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/engineering/maps/#

I built a simple 4 bay bow tie antenna for UHF. Mine looks like the one pictured at the top of this thread.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/consumer-electronics/614073-how-build-your-own-4-bay.html
Here is a really nice example of one:
http://www.dtvusaforum.com/dtv-hdtv-reception-antenna-discussion/8629-kosmic-antennas-superquad-4-bay-bowtie.html

I also built a folded dipole for VHF: Here is an example:
http://crdahl.com/antennas/dipole.html

My stations were fairly close by. These two antennas are not high gain antennas. I added a Winegard preampt to bring up the signal a bit. I have been very pleased. So, in summary, there is nothing different. Just look up your local stations and pick an antenna based on band(s) and distance.

Interestingly, In Charlotte, NC the Fox News channel on cable actually went black for 18 minutes about the time it was clear that Romney was going to lose. I was watching Fox for amusement. I thought it was just that channel as other channels looked OK. So, I switched from the HD Fox news channel to the low def channel and it was black too. I was surprised I never heard anything about it in the news. I just double checked and the outage was between 11:20 and 11:40 PM eastern.

Charlotte, NC. My polling place usually runs like clockwork. Today was no exception. Poll workers are great. Even had chairs in the hallway leading to the voting machines so people could sit while they waited for the poll to open.

I arrived 25 minutes before the poll opened. I was about the 40th person in line. The poll opened exactly on time. In 15 minutes I was out.

The line had backed up while I was voting. Looked to be about an hour wait.

We have LCD touch screens and a human readable printed paper entry is logged every time you touch a button. The system seems to work pretty well.

I have been keeping up with the campaigns. I research every person I vote for. But, I always find myself holding my nose when I pull the trigger. However, a good friend of mine was running for a judge seat. That one was an easy choice.

I would argue that ironically, it was a Democrat who really opened up the door for faith issues entering political dialogue. Carter described himself as a 'born again Christian' in the 1976 election. Of course, faith did come up in the Kennedy election too. But, Carter was portraying his faith as an asset where Kennedy was trying prevent his faith from being seen as a liability (concerns about allegiance to the Pope).

I see you have email.
Don't forget: You also have a browser.
You can do useful things with a browser.
(like fact check political emails)

Ah, the 'executive orders' email. The number of people that take these emails as gospel just astounds me. This 'Executive Orders' baloney was forwarded to me by my dad. I never ever read a political email and just assume it is factual. And indeed, they are almost always not. This one certainly falls in the 'pants on fire' category.

So far, Obama has issued 138. That is less than 'W' and from a brief inspection everyone else all of the way back to Grover Cleveland (if you average the per term numbers for those with multiple terms). For example Bush issued 173 the first term and 118 the second for an average of about 145.

A couple of links for you:
American Presidency Project - Executive Orders
Snopes article

I went to high school near Hampton, VA. In 1978 we had an acoustic modem and a printer terminal and could hook into the mainframe at NASA Langley. So, we actually had some exposure back then. No classes were built around it though. So, what we learned was completely on our own.

Currently, there is a war on science, scientific method, evolution and facts in general. As a geek, I'd like to contribute to charities that work to counter this very disturbing effort.

We are wasting way too much time fighting battles that in reality have already been decided in the factual world. So, to counter those whose battle cry is (insert fingers in ears) 'LA LA LA LA LA LA LA', we need to back those who believe that scientific method works (because it does). We need well funded advocates for rational thought. The nuts are clearly outspending us.

I'd have to research to find organizations to which I would donate. This organization came up in a brief search NCSE (National Center for Science Education). But, I'd have to do more investigating before I would donate.

I bet they have to pay a Verizon employee to daily verify your phone number is still on the list (can you see me now?).

Or maybe it is like the Verizon witness protection program. Your phone number will get its own case agent. Hey, this stuff costs money.

Can you tell I used to be a Verizon customer?

You never know when your math skills are going to come in handy. I was working at a financial institution. We needed to calculate APR. Someone found a formula in a book and wrote an algorithm. The algorithm worked sometimes and other times its answers did not match those we were getting from other software. The problem fell to me. I was a math major. I looked at that same book where they found their formula and was able to see past the formula on the page and realized the formula assumed all payment periods were the same length. In our case, this was not always so. So, for loans where all periods were the same length the APR calculation was correct. For those that had one or more periods of a different length, it was incorrect.

It does not happen every day. But, I would say that 4 or 5 times in my career, my math background really paid off in a direct manner. Countless times it has paid off indirectly.

I like being a math major. Being a programmer is like owning a toolbox. You can have the best toolbox in the world, but if you don't know how to use the tools to solve a problem (like fix a car), they are of little use. You can have a deep and thorough understanding programming technologies, but if you can't apply your knowledge to solving a problem, your knowledge is of little use.

Being a math major often allows me to understand problems and how to fix them. Being a programmer gives me tools to do the work.

Re: "The whole idea of ham radio is to talk to other people"

Amateur radio does not at all have to be about communicating with other hams.

For example:
We use the amateur radio APRS technology to track weather balloons that we send up to 100,000 feet or so. I integrated all of the electronics and fabricated the balloon communications payload. I built all of my antennas. A friend projected the flight path and tracked the balloon in flight. We have flown 6 or so flights. It is a blast.

Transmitting APRS data on ham frequencies requires a ham license. But, through all of this, we never had to converse with another ham (although, they could see our data on the APRS system).

This is just one example. There are many more (For example: developing digital signal processing algorithms for analyzing signals). This is one of the things that attracts me to the hobby. There are social aspects if that is what you like. But there are also opportunities to go out on your own and scratch that geeky itch.

As far as ways to exercise his interests: Amateur radio is a great hobby for tinkerers. There are plenty of opportunities for exercising his soldering or other electronics related skills. Many aspects of the hobby are extremely computer friendly (Digital signal processing, APRS + many others). If he is in to model cars, rockets ..., a ham license gives you additional options for handling telemetry.