VHF frequencies tended to flow around obstructions. UHF frequencies tended to be more "line of sight".

Lower frequencies cast a much longer shadow behind obstacles, where higher frequencies will fill-in the area more immediately behind the obstacle. People might be most familiar with AM radio fading out when driving under a bridge, while FM radio does not.

The flip side of that, which you're talking about, is that lower frequencies will lose less of their power over long distances, diffracting around the curvature of the earth, than higher frequencies.

However, that's largely compensated for by UHF broadcast and consumer receive antennas having much higher "gain" than VHF, as well as the FCC accounting for the difference and allowing UHF broadcasters to crank-up their broadcast power accordingly.

In theory, it's possible to receive VHF stations further away. In practice, you'll have a hell of a time picking up either VHF or UHF more than 50 miles away, and it gets pretty expensive after that (unless you're blessed with ideal terrain).

In my case, with some effort, I can pickup both VHF and UHF stations from 130 miles away, and the UHF stations happen to be stronger than the VHF stations.

So two stations that were previously using 6 MHz bandwidth each, will now share one channel, presumably using 3 MHz each.... and so each will have a 50% drop in picture quality. How is this a good thing for the consumer?

Answer: Because NOTHING you've said has a shred of truth. You might try looking-up KCET and KLCS before ignorantly spouting off next time...

KLCS has been operating on a waiver... They've never been broadcasting any HD channels, but just 4 SD channels. KCET has one HD 720p channel, and 3 SD subs. The two can pretty easily fit in the 19Mbps bandwidth of a single 6MHz carrier, without degrading quality at all. In addition, both could stand to drop some of those sub-channels...

KCET's NHK channel largely duplicates KSCI's carriage of several hours of NHK programming per day, as well as both KCET and KLCS carrying a half hour segments of NHK on their main channels, several times a day. Incidentally, KSCI has been operating with 9-10 SD subchannels in their single 6MHz channel for years, now.

Answer #2: PBS in the greater Los Angeles area is a complete fucking mess.

Before KCET dropped their PBS affiliation (an idiotic move, but that's another topic), they were just one of 5 PBS stations available in the greater LA area: KCET, KLCS, KOCE, KVCR, KPBS (and likely others). Now they're down to a mere 4, which is still frankly 2 or 3 too many. All of which are broadcasting almost the same content as each other, often at or near each others' time-slots. Each covers their own smaller footprint, with their own smaller niche, getting a fraction of the public donations during their pledge drives. Whereas one single PBS broadcaster in could cover a larger area, get a bigger chunk of viewers, get a bigger chunk of the donations, and improve their programming, accordingly.

KCET should just up and die, already. They dropped their PBS affiliation in a dispute over money, complaining they were paying out half their income to get PBS programming. Since then, their income has dropped by far more than half, because they no longer have any content most anyone wants to watch. They're only delaying the inevitable by selling off their assets; first their large and empty TV studio, and now their transmitter.

It's kind-of a good move for KLCS OTA TV viewers in SoCal, because KCET had invested in building several digital repeaters, to provide a very strong signal in areas where it is difficult or expensive to get Los Angeles area broadcasts. A sadly worthless move once they dropped their PBS affiliation and nobody watched their channel anymore, but getting KLCS on there would deliver PBS content again, and get some use out of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The FCC's "repacking" is a dammed cluster-fuck, screwing over OTA viewers (whose numbers are currently RISING after the digital transition made OTA far more viable). By reducing viewing options, and/or pushing broadcasters into less viable channels (eg. VHF-lo) where their broadcast footprint will be reduced, they're starting to destroy the system they've slowly and painfully built-up over the past 75 years. This just for the benefit of cell-phone companies, who would rather throw more money at buying-up the public's available spectrum (at very cheap, fire-sale prices), rather than investing in picocell sites with smaller horizons and much higher frequency reuse. But the one small advantage it offers is the chance for sick and failing TV broadcasters to cash-out in a cash-positive way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And we're full circle.

That's what happens when you use circular logic...

For the term broadband to retain its meaning of "fast Internet", it needs to refer to speeds that can be considered fairly snappy in today's reality,

I agree. Let's do that just after we upgrade "dial-up" and "ISDN" to high speeds.

Like "broadband", they meant "high speed" once upon a time. As you're saying, since it meant something once, we must force it to continue to mean the same thing, forever.

Microsoft decides that it's in their best interest for all customers to use identical UIs, so they make Metro the standard interface on phones, video game systems, tablets, desktops, and servers. Apple decides that it's in their customers' best interest for products to have similar but individualized UIs, so they create tailored interfaces for tiny, small, and large displays.

That, in a nutshell, is the difference between the two companies (and why Apple is eating Microsoft's lunch in every category where they directly compete).

Get rid of your dictator and adopt a representative democracy and it will be over. Indeed, nobody could have thought it would go on this long.

Perhaps the space stations (in the universe of the movie) were orbited that way to facilitate resupply of all 3 with one launch.

Removing the human from the loop in aircraft automation has been a source of unending problems

Commercial aviation is now safer than it ever was in the past.

Fully autonomous driving is doable IF it is only along routes that have been verified and to some extent instrumented. I predict we'll see a few Approved Routes initially, such as stretches of Interstate. Fairly soon, the approved routes will account for the majority of vehicle miles driven. Then there will be a long tail of routes and conditions that won't be automated anytime soon. Basically, just like cellphone coverage.

The New England Patriots make about $428M a year across 16 games, each of which takes an average of 192 minutes. That works out to about $139K per minute. If Bill Belichick thinks he can work more efficiently with papyrus and a scribe, there'd be a tiny replica of the Nile in the basement of Gillette Stadium by the end of the day.

With "smart" people ranging from type-A personalities, to high-functioning autistics, it's not surprising they wouldn't find one specific set of genes for intelligence. There is extreme variation in "smart", and even more for "academic achievement", where a complete idiot (for lack of a better term) willing to put in substantial effort, can perform just as well as a highly intelligent person without such motivation.

...and 4Mbps is still faster than dial-up today.

Review sites like Yelp and the sort will throw up every roadblock at any attempt by any court to de-anonymize a user.

Courts don't like being messed with. They try that a few times, and they'll eventually get smacked-down, hard.

In short, it's impossible to identify a poster

Bull.

Do you honestly think the stock room is like a door to narnia that has infinite space?

No, I simply think you would like to sell your merchandise, not give it a permanent home in your back room. Who buys it, and for what purpose, is completely irrelevant to that goal. I also don't think it's a war-crime that sometimes an item is going to be out-of-stock.

Clearly you never had to manage stock at a grocery store before..

Actually, yes. A small convenience store, which sold a decent selection of groceries.

Unscrupulous companies will sometimes engage in reverse-astroturfing, where they hire a bunch of folks to post bad reviews of their competitors.

That's called "libel" and it's been illegal forever.

Posting fake positive reviews is immoral, but legal. Posting fake negative reviews can get your ass hauled into court, and paying for every cent of damage your actions did to the target, multiplied by whatever factor the judge likes...

We told her she couldn't do that and was meant for families. So we started putting limit signs. She would then start sending in her kids to get more.

Who you MEANT for an item to be sold to is irrelevant. If I want to buy tampons to use as insulation in my walls, I don't expect an argument. It's not like the customers are the ones who set the prices on the items you're selling, YOU did that, and are complaining that it didn't work out quite the way you WANTED it to. You can try coupons, with lots of terms and conditions to put limits on such things, but at the end of the day, the best solution is just to price items properly. Hell, that's Walmart's slogan, and they're not exactly at a loss to get customers in the store, or having problems turning a profit.

After so much hassle and constantly running out of product annoying others customers, the owner banned her and her family from the store

Sounds like you could have made lots of money off of her, by not keeping prices quite so artificially low. You knew there would be huge demand, so having larger stocks before your sale would be a pretty obvious solution, too.

you shouldn't get away with using "broadband" as a term unless "broad" really is an applicable adjective

"broad" has NOTHING AT ALL to do with how fast the connection is. I could have a communications link using an extremely wide range of frequencies, and still have very slow internet. The opposite of "broad" is "base", and baseband connections happen to be far, far faster.

You may be thinking of wideband, but that's a different term all-together, and not really applicable, because communications can indeed be sped-up considerably without increasing the bandwidth.