There was nothing wrong with TNG the television show, particularly after it found its footing and stopped trying to emulate its predecessor. The movies on the other hand.... First Contact and Nemesis were just dumbed down dark action movies. Generations ranks was one of the most insulting movies ever made. Ironically, Insurrection, which was generally panned, was the closest they got to capturing the feel of the television show. Of course, even that one collapsed under the weight of its plot contrivances and couldn't resist the temptation to dip into action movie cliches. Here's a hint Rick Berman: Jean-Luc Picard != John McClane.

Random list of TNG episodes that were way better than any the movies: The Most Toys, Who Watches the Watchers, The Survivors, The Defector, The Measure of a Man, The Wounded, First Contact (the episode, not the movie), The Drumhead, Power Play, and Sarek. That's without going to the crown jewels of TNG, imagine Yesterday's Enterprise or The Best of Both Worlds if produced with a feature film budget. Actually, perhaps it's better that we don't, because they probably would have found a way to fuck them up.

Everything that came after All Good Things was just a bad nightmare.

Listening to cordless and cellular phone calls is indeed a crime in the United States, even though they used to be broadcast in the clear.

You believed something Microsoft said? Sucker. MSFT's promises are about as credible as "The check is in the mail" and "I'll pull out"

It's the opposite of the Star Trek movies. ;)

(Until Nemesis had to go and completely suck, even beyond the abysmal standard of the TNG movies)

Thus explaining why Obama kept his campaign promises about allowing Medicare to negotiate prices in bulk and citizens to re-import cheaper drugs from Canada.

Oh wait.....

A business that can't be bothered to keep competent IT most likely has automatic updates turned on, even for their servers, thus the e-mails to them would be redundant. Businesses with competent and dedicated IT people are most likely using WSUS, which provides its own mechanism to get e-mails about newly available updates, as well as total control over when and where they're installed.

Free? I don't think you understand what "free" means. And you got your "free" health care in part by a huge giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry, an industry whose abuses of the patent system are legendary.

If we held back technological advances because of job losses we'd still be tipping elevator operators and routing our calls through Ethel at the local central office.

It really is that cheap. $4.95/mo for the package + $0.43 in franchise fees = $5.38/mo. It nets you seven channels, contrasted to the nine I get with my OTA rig. It's missing three of the subchannels I get with OTA and includes QVC (thanks for that Time Warner). I believe people with QAM tuners get a few extra channels, which aren't encrypted, but it's been awhile since I've had cable so I'd have to confirm that.

There's plenty of Government agencies that need talented IT people (*cough* HHS *cough*) where you don't need to deal with 'insane government clearance bullshit'.

You're tacitly equating the organization that gave us Reading Rainbow, The News Hour, and Nova with the organization that gave us Xenu? Seriously?

Incidentally, there is a difference between PBS and its member stations, whom receive most of the benefit from the pledge drives. I can't speak to the financial situation of PBS, but I do have friends on the board of our local PBS station, and they've never been flush with cash.

Those days never existed except for those lucky enough to live within a few miles of the transmitters. These people can still use rabbit ears and pull in quality signals. A friend of mine uses the non-amplified version of this, aimed at an inside wall of his house in the direction of the transmitters, and he pulls in the same channels I do. I'm 15 miles out, with a row of trees in the way, so I had to go to one of these, mounted on my back porch, which fortuitously happens to face the transmitters. Growing up I lived about 70 miles out, as the crow flies, and we had to use something like this, on a mast, with in-line amplifiers, and an antenna rotor.

Regarding 8VSB, current receivers can handle multi-path just fine. You're also overlooking the fact that multi-path was an issue with NTSC as well, leading to ghost images. Digital either works or it doesn't, invest in a quality receiver and proper antenna design (rabbit ears don't count) and you're very likely to end up in the "works" category.

Yes, and the broadcaster isn't very apt to agree to that if the CATV provider is marking up the channel, are they? Local broadcast channels are supposed to be made available at or very close to cost, because we decided as a matter of public policy that we wished to keep them in business for all the benefits (real and imagined) provided by them.

In any case, Aereo was trying to profit off the work of others, without offering them any sort of consideration in return. Why don't you try putting up an antenna and reselling the signal to your neighbors for profit. Do you think such behavior would be regarded as legal or acceptable?

Aereo was a leech. They were trying to take OTA signals, for free, and retransmit them for profit. There's no "must carry" analogy here, "must carry" implies that the channels are made available for cost (where I live the CATV provider offers local broadcast channels for next to nothing, $4.95/mo last time I checked), not that the CATV provider is marking them up for profit.

Here's an interesting history of the relevant legislation if you're curious.