Reprieve for analog TV; still no metric system

It appears people who still rely on wire-coiled Pringles cans for TV reception may have a few more months to pick up those Everybody Loves Raymond reruns without a digital decoder.

When I worked for a TV manufacturing conglomerate back in 2000-2001, everyone presumed the big switch to digital TV would happen on schedule -- in 2006. We also thought, of course, that one-gigabyte MP3 players would always be impossibly expensive or too huge to be portable, so I'll shut up now about what we thought.

Anyone who, like me, remembers the debate about converting everyday U.S. measurements to the metric system? That was supposed to happen when, in 1975? So now metric proponents can take heart: they're still in the race to beat the transition to all-digital television! That reprieve makes debates about "the last mile" ironic, no?

Pringles sound good about now.