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Who Controls Your Television?
Nurgled writes "The EFF, reportedly the only consumer rights organization to be granted membership of the Digital Video Broadcasting consortium, reports that TV and movie industry representatives have been pushing for DRM in the DVB technologies. This in itself is not entirely unexpected, but these talks have been going on in closed meetings. The EFF itself has been blocked from reporting on this until now as a condition of being allowed to attend. The proposed technologies allow rights-holders and broadcasters to severely hamper your ability to make use of broadcast television content, including the ability to retroactively blacklist any devices that consumers may already own that act in ways undesirable to the rights-holder or broadcaster. The EFF concludes that public interest and consumer rights advocates must fight back."
I control the "OFF" switch. TV is less and less important to me with each passing day.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I guess I'll have to download all my shows from piratebay then.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Hoard recievers and other hardware built before 2003 NOW. Hoard hardware built buy manufacturers outside of this DVB consortium. Then boycott the CONTENT of companies that use the broadcast flag.
The one good thing about capitalism is that companies that try to grab more rights for themselves than for their customers go out of business and get replaced with companies that don't. There will be pirate stations that will broadcast analog still, and there will be pirate content creators who create digital content without the broadcast flag, or better yet with all the bits turned on.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The taxpayers will own your TV set in 2009 if you are still watching OTA Broadcast.
Yay for the continued fleecing of Americans over this shift all of which benefits the coffers of the government when they resell the spectrum for billions.
artisan chapbook makers, live children puppet-shows, and, of course, Linux.
Seriously, if this crap goes down, I'm going back to reading Victorian novels -- and maybe watching the occasional episode of Entourage at a friends' house.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
In othe words, "Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free!"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Is it me, or is "retroactively blacklist" the most unpleasant piece of this? So if I am a good-user who does nothing untoward, I would risk having my TV no longer speak to my DVR because a nephew came over and had had his X-box-cum-torrent-seed plugged in? Yuck.
I prefer technology which makes it easier to do what one wants to do, rather than harder.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Well, some mysterious guy keeps telling me that he controls both the horizontal and the vertical.
Will encapsulating digital content in an encrypted wrapper cause greater signal loss from noise?
I may not have phrased that perfectly, but I am wondering if this hurts error correction measures...
Idiots. The more they push people away with their DRM bullshit, the more people are going to pirate shit off the internet. I can absolutely guarantee the MOMENT any of this is implemented, I will not be watching any of the TV shows that use it. I will simply download ALL my TV shows (instead of just some of them) and the TV people can kiss my ass. :)
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
I love it to see how the Mediacorps work hardly to make them obsolete. More and more younger People allready stop using the TV for Fun in the Internet. If they cripple the TV much more, nobody will use it anymore. Till they have the DRM implemented in Broadcasts and set it activ, the Internet will change the Media much more.
I don't own a TV. The internet replaced that ugly contraption years ago.
Reminds me of an old Max Headroom episode
Why not let the market take care of it? If these overly restrictive DRM terms turn off enough people then the market itself will force these companies to open up their systems more. Why is this something we need to fight? If these DRM terms do NOT lead to lower sales then it reflects the people don't really care about their media being free in the first place.
Is this a case of "fair use" activists trying to genuinely protect our rights or perhaps thinking they speak for everyone when they really don't?
Which is it?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Janie Crane: "Edison... an off switch!"
Metrocop: "She'll get years for that. Off switches are illegal!"
- from Max Headroom, Episode 1.6, Blanks
Every year, another episode of Max Headroom comes true.
1.1: Blipverts - now we have ads designed to look OK at both regular speed, and at DVR-fast-forward "2 seconds" speeds.
1.2: Rakers - what's the difference between Raking and other "extreme sports" or "Wildest Police Videos"?
1.3: Body Banks - we now purchase organs harvested from Chinese prisoners
1.4: Security Systems - live, real-time monitoring of citizens, walled communities, etc.
1.5: War - both the Yugoslavian unpleasantness and Gulf War II appear to have been engineered for purposes of getting good ratings
1.6: Blanks - anyone without papers is "blank", and subject to arbitrary arrest, detention, and disappearance.
Anyone want to take on the last 6-7 episodes?
... when you have slashdot?
But I control the power switch! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
Best Slashdot Co
I think that stores like best buy, walmart , circuit city, and so on would press for no blacking of devices as they are the ones that will have to deal with the consumers taking back the blacking devices that don't work any more and look bad the as all that needs to happen is some one to hack one player or tv for all the same tv or player to be blacked list or force to have a firmware update. there will be a lot people out there who may have a hard time doing it for them selfs and will ask the store to do for free and some may not let the consumer update it by them self.
For four years I've been without cable or antenna. I don't miss it at all. The only problem is that, between no tv and adblockers on firefox, I don't know what I'm suppose to buy next! Now I wonder how I would get any reading done if I did have to watch tv. The only reason I had cable before that was the Mariners (US Baseball team) were doing good. THAT hasn't been a problem lately.
I kind of feel for the advertisers that are trying to reach me. I'm hard to get. I'm surprised when new models of cars show up on the road. About the only place an advertiser can reach me now is by magazine or very selective AM broadcast. So, if you want me, you'll have to pony up for and ad in the New Yorker or on the Ed Schultz show. (or see if Tor or Del Rey will put ads in their SF novels!)
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Given that governments routinely roll over to this group (and groups like it), you can't fault them for trying for the whole enchilada. Why wouldn't they, when they've yet to be smacked down over all their requests, and as corporations, they have incredible patience to keep pushing the same requests over and over again.
... but I'm guessing it's pretty accurate.
... if I was the majors, I'd fear the next generation who doesn't care one whit about "their" content.
If I wasn't sadly jaded, I'd have put the article down to outrageous hyperbole
However, I think they are missing the big point. YouTube is successful not because it has clips and full shows of copyrighted material, but because it's chock full of stuff - amateur and professionally done - that's free.
I've watched how my kids use it (9 & 12, and the next big consumer generation) and they watch stuff that people posted that they'd done themselves.
TV is becoming less relevant to us old folks, who grew up on it
Kids aren't "into" shows as they have been in the past, and will skip or watch an episode of something they see in passing on TV on a whim - when they bother to have it on at all.
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
TV and movie industry representatives have been pushing for DRM in the DVB technologies.
Not that I would actually RTFA (LOL) to find out, but does DVB mean Dumbass Viral Bastards? I know that DRM stands for Damned Rediculous Monster.
Maybe this is part of the conspiracy plot Hillary's been talking about.
By making watching TV as onerous as possible, eventually it will take away the worker's desire to go home at the end of the day, thereby encouraging them to work longer hours, thereby increasing productivity.
My God! It's brilliant!
With age, I find my patience is just about to the point that I can see myself waiting until the 2 or 3 decent shows each year come out on DVD. Once my DirecTV subscription is up, I'll probably forego the whole broadcast morass.
The algorithm to do so will be put in a hardware chip both to preserve the IP (of the algorithm itself) and to mitigate performance loss. That's why integrating the functions of the processor and the video card is such an important business move.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I do not own a tv!
Complaints about this kind of stuff are ridiculous. It's like the complaints about Walmart. Sure, people complain before it comes to down, but then they shop there anyway. You know, if no one shops there, they will not be there for very long. Same thing with content. If the terms of use are so bad, then do not use it. If enough people do not use it, then the content will either go away (generally not a bad thing considering that almost all of it sucks anyway), or the terms of use will become more favourable. The "problem" is that most people do not have the willpower or self control to just turn it off. They can't get by without their 24, Alias, Friends, or whatever other trash they are addicted to. JUST TURN IT OFF!!! The terms of use problem will then go away, one way or another.
Correct me if I am wrong but this is all about the broadcast flag and how it can be used to enforce the draconian copyright laws for televised content? If so, I remember having a very similar conversation with a friend back when all the talk about government taking back analogue channels back.
My thoughts were if the gov. takes back the analogue channels and the content providers only sent us digital information, they could then easily control exactly what is done with content by forcing all said devices to obey predefined rules. This all ties into the whole requirement of tvs needing special digital decoders after a said date (wasn't it anything made after 2005?). I saw this coming about that time, must have been almost two years ago now.
All I can say is I sure am glad I don't watch tv anymore.
Brendan
You think? How much longer before Zik Zak gets the law passed, making it illegal to turn off a tv?
I don't actually watch anything other than Simpsons and Amazing Race, but pay attention to the point implied by EFF et. al.:
The reason TV sucks is because established "content providers" have a stranglehold on entry into the market, and will do anything (including, yes, make the Off switch illegal) to keep that hold.
Free the hardware platform for broadcast, and the possibilities for quality TV will explode
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
It is the revenue stream that controls TV. That revenue stream comes from either subscribers or advertisers. Both depend on viewership/marketshare, so you control the revenue stream.
Is MCDonalds made a TurdBurger and nobody bought it, they'd soon cut it from the menu. If TV viewership dropped by 50% the TV industry would soon change their tune.
Most people, however, just won't care and will take whatever is thrown at them.
You don't need TV. I have not had TV for approx 10 years (and yes, I do have a wife + kids).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have not watched TV (in my home) for 10 years now, no cable, no satellite no antenna. I only use my TV as a HD monitor for my DVD player and on occasion the computer. All that money I would have paid to watch COMERCIALS has really paid (no pun intended) off in the long run. Save yourself some money and ditch the TV; you can get ALL the news you need through FREE over the air AM/FM broadcast, Shortwave and what ever Internet connection you have.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
We all D/L our shows anyways, right? Let 'em dig a whole so deep when they they lose customers in droves they will never be able to climb back out.
Q: How to stay in business?
A: Give the customer what they want.
Q: How to put yourself and your entire industry put of business?
A: Screw the customer in every possible way.
"Currently, DVB standards are limited to getting TV signals to your house, but they do not limit what you do with those signals after they've entered the privacy of your home"
I agree we need a policy that whatever two consenting devices do in the privacy of *my #$^$#%ing house is their own business.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
My wife. Duh.
Now wait just one second - the US property tax dates back to the Revolutionary War. If you want to say that it's anti-libertarian, that's fine, but it's hardly anti-American.
It's certainly a more classic "American" tax than the income tax is, which notably required a Constitutional Amendment to pass muster, and taxing property holders as an approach dates back to feudal taxes payed to the king by the landholder.
What does this have to do with corporations?
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
You mean the box I use to watch DVDs and play video games? I control it. Why do you ask?
There's two things which stick out in my mind as being THE FUTURE:
1) Companies which allow consumers "a way around" -- of course "unintentionally" -- are going to sell more hardware than anyone else and they surely know it. You can't realisticly expect me to believe that all those DVD players "accidentally" had the region-change firmware features left in there. They coded it themselves, surely they knew people would eventually find it. It may not have been a corporate decision per se, but someone in development Had A Clue.
2) Brush up on your soldering skills: Game consoles already use modchips to play imports, backups, and outright pirate. The old catch-phrase "when they outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" certainly applies. When they outlaw imports, only outlaws will have imports.
My wife, of course..
Because I don't have a TV, and I haven't had one for years.
Sure, I've got a DLP projector. And I do have an Avermedia A180 ATSC tuner for my Vista Media Center machine.. but that is mostly a "oh.. i guess ATSC kind of works" thing. My wife will watch 1-3 shows per week recorded over ATSC. If it stops working, it stops working.
Recently, I involved myself in a conversation about IPTV, how long it was taking to roll out, problems with it, and so on.
Sorry - I've been enjoying IPTV for a while now. I've got an HTPC, and I've got bittorrent. All the TV i care about comes in over IP packet.
The internet truly routes around defective nodes, irrespective of the reason for the defect. When they're political or social, the internet works just as well.
Sometimes the ATSC signal is weak enough (poor antenna placement, but fixing it is low-priority) that the recording is unwatchable. my wife will let me know and then i'll go find the torrent (usually within 12 hours of the show airing) and we'll have it in another 2 hours. That is IP TV and that is available today.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Markets only work when there are choices and there's no collusion between those you can choose between. The consortium reported on here is all about colluding to avoid market forces.
I think it's possible that new content providers and models will provide competition, and there's all kinds of completely different media now capturing attention share that television used to command, and so I suspect that if net neutrality isn't destroyed that there will be enough alternatives to keep markets working, if slowly while the dinosaurs struggle to change. But it's not going to be a sure thing, certainly nothing to get complacent about.
Tweet, tweet.
That's what the retroactive blacklist is about. It's even worse than the posters above thought; you can be a good user who does nothing untoward and your TV will stop talking to your DVR because some other person halfway around the world compromised their DVR of the same model as yours, and the decryption key (which is particular to your model) is cancelled. At that point only a firmware "upgrade" to change the key (and presumably disable the hack) will restore you to operation.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I don't have kids, but it seems to me the vast popularity of certain kiddy anime points pretty strongly against kids today not being interested in TV. They certainly love films - there are lots of children's films and even mainstream stuff is often toned down to get a profit-crucial teen or kid age rating.
Of course, they'll also play the games and get the toys, so TV isn't everything.
I'd even be okay with two--sales and property tax. Maybe even three: sales, property, and income. But this enormous scheme of having a thousand taxes on everything seems like a shell game.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
just like with racism, we can't simply stop pro-flag laws if we want to keep this consumer right, we need to be pushing for one or ideally more than one anti-flag law.
make it illegal to use such a scheme, period, at the federal level and this problem goes away.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
What a coincidence.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Between this and software that recognizes through webcams weather or not we're watching ads on our computers, we're all becoming quite the consumer sheep, aren't we? People will fall for this if they're given something shiny enough to take the sting of their liberties being stripped out.
You know... with all of these digital rights management programs out, you know what this makes me realize? That my analogue VCR will ALWAYS have a home should I want to record something~
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
short example: the hr20 dvr from direct-tv records (when its not crashing..) HD content from satellite.
I had problems with mine and wanted to cancel. I called their CSR and asked to disconnect my service since I was sending this POS back.
now, I had the unit for a few days and there were some unwatched shows on its drive. shows I had planned to see before returning the unit.
you can guess what happened. as soon as they sent the 'disconnect' signal, AND while my unit was plugged in (key thing) - it proceeded to LOCK UP my saved shows and not let me watch them!
un freaking believable. and the CSR rep acted like it was a surprise to him. when all along, they knew they were gonna lock up your data if your bill goes unpaid (shows you DID pay for and have a right to still see!). or, if your dish goes down you may ALSO be unable to watch saved shows.
we are already 'here'. and it sucks.
and that was one reason why I cancelled. I now have my own HDTV tuner (hdhomerun from silicondust.com) and while I get no premium (hbo, etc) content, I do at least have control over the PURE MPEG shows that I save, with zero drm. in fact, I watch more PBS (in high def) now than I ever watched PBS before. in a way, this whole DRM stuff is probably HELPING free and open networks like PBS get more viewership!
just remember this issue about direct-tv and probably dish (and cable, too). if your receiver says 'no' then all saved shows are ALSO a 'no'. just know that going into it - if you decide to go in, at all.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If you sell someone a product, you don't get to follow them home and monitor their use of it. If they reverse engineer it, good for them. If they reproduce it, good for them. If they distribute or sell their reproductions, sue them. You can't prevent all your customers from using what they bought just to make sure none of them misuse it.
It's like selling a sandwich and requiring the buyer to agree not to open it to see what it's made of, and then following them home to make sure they don't open it because you're afraid they might learn how to make it themselves and post the recipe online along with *GASP* a picture of the sandwich! It doesn't matter that they told everyone that you made the sandwich, not them. It doesn't matter that this free publicity drew hundreds of new customers to your little sandwich shop. No, you're a paranoid control freak who thinks his sandwich sales will drop because people can get the recipe online, even though there's no evidence supporting this. In fact, you're considering selling the sandwich in locked lucite boxes that only expose the sandwich one bite at a time, and while you're at it, why don't you collect information on sandwich usage, kitchen appliances, travel habits, and social security numbers? All this security is costing so much, the sandwiches that should cost about $2.25 now cost about $19.95.
And now you're wondering why you're being outsold by those unprotected sandwich shops charging $2.25.
none of it is important to me, I do not watch TV.
You can't handle the truth.
As long as I have CNN.com and Slashdot.org, they can do what they want. I just won't watch it. I didn't purchase a TV to watch cable (I use MythTV), so if they take away that option, it isn't exactly going to encourage me to give them my money.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
http://toykeeper.net/media/Max_Headroom/1 583
http://video.aol.com/video-category/max-headroom/
IMNSHO, there is very little, if any, content on TV that is worth pirating, let alone watching. I have DirecTV and about the only thing that I listen to is the XM Classics channel (no irritating commercials). Once the kids move out, I will probably ditch the satellite, go back to OTA TV and an XM radio receiver, if they still exist, or do without. They can put on ALL the controls they want on their TV stuff. I have over 400 record albums and enough hobbies to keep myself occupied. Then when they whine and wonder why no one is watching anymore, I will then refer them to "Obviousman" for advice and consult.
Until a couple of weeks ago, I was an honest downloader. By that I mean I applied the shareware ideals to the content I downloaded via torrents. What do I mean by this?
Let's look at two TV shows I enjoy very much, 'Lost' and 'Heroes'. For the past couple of years I would watch a TV program on my TiVo and then download the episode via torrent for reference if needed further on in the season. If I enjoyed the show "that" much, once the DVD set would come out, I would purchase said DVD set and delete the downloaded files. This was until a couple of weeks ago when my ISP informed me that an agent of NBC Universal was whining that I was downloading/sharing a torrent of an episode of Heroes. You bet I posted this anonymously. Those bastards are relentless in their pursuit of my misery.
Based on a lot of searching online, it appears the broadcast networks have stepped up their assault on people downloading broadcast TV episodes. So, this begs the following question: How would the broadcasters feel if the torrent creators left the commercials in the broadcast? Would they shut up and go away? My feeling is no. They want to ensure 100% that we are forced to watch the commercials. Of course we all know it would be very easy to just take them out of the file once we had them or move that slider forward 3-5 minutes.
I know advertising is main money driver of Television, but these media industries need to realize that society is changing their business model for them and all they are doing is resisting and creating terrible quality online content riddled with DRM which makes their TV episodes completely unwatchable in full screen resolutions.
I am so sick and tired of all this broadcast flag and control bullshit. All of the media industries have continued to piss me off at various times between 1999 and now. I don't see this stopping anytime soon either.
Those of us that are downloading TV to keep mid/long term are fans and the companies are doing nothing but ruining the fan experience.
'Give us what we want, or we'll go away'
'...and the geeks shall inherit the earth.'
Is entertainment really such an important thing that we need this fight?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
the content providers are monopolies for each show.. they formed an oligopolistic trade group, and they have the dmca.
they apparently successfully perpetrated the bluff that they'd refuse broadcasters who didnt adopt DRM.. thus all broadcasted media is DRM encumbered.
because of this DRM and the dmca, any electronics maker that wants to enter the cable market (80% or so of the TV market in general) has to comply with hollywood's every monopolistic whim.
this is clearly a case of abuse of a monopoly position in order to gain a monopoly in other markets.. it's an obvious violation of antitrust laws, and nobody is lifting so much as a finger to enforce them. it's disgusting and makes me wish i were anything other than my vile and corrupt species.
it really is not a question of choosing alternatives.. there ARE NO ALTERNATIVES without drm.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It was this guy.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
That's not acceptable.
Companies have a right to manufacture their product however they wish. Consumers have a right to refuse to purchase whatever they wish.
"More laws" is not the answer.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
So, the broadcasters want to increase direct and indirect costs and persecute their viewers.
There is a management speak phrase, "Managing Decline", and that is exactly what they appear to be doing.
Except, producers of something have every right to attach whatever conditions they wish to that product. If you don't like those conditions, don't use it. It's that simple.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
They have Brimstone!
Most excellent.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
riight.. your argument is a classic example of bounded rationality in that it neglects the broader picture.
the companies struck first by making it illegal for consumers to bypass DRM whenever they wish, and making it illegal for companies to manufacture those drm circumvention tools.
thus, since this aweful law is firmly embedded (thanks to the lovely bounded rationale of laws == morality), then we need laws banning a monopoly's use of DRM to gain carte blanch regulatory control over other unrelated markets, such as electronics.
other such neglect many monopoly abuse apologists will bring up is the "you can just choose not to buy", which is not a real choice when there's only one seller. if this fallacy were to apply to everything we'd have a choice of living as serfs or living in a cave rubbing 2 sticks together.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
and we couldn't keep them away from the TV, so I had it disconected.
In exchenage I now have the cmoplte pokemon series, bob the builder, dora the explorer.
I jsut didn't want them changing channels ans seeing the news. This was shortly after 9/11/01.
I must say that I miss TV terribly. All kinds of great shows popped up. oh well, it's best for the kids.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's nothing to watch - it's all ads. The ratio of ads to content is approaching unity every year - on the worse stations there are four minutes of ads for every five minutes of content. Of that content, very very little appeals to me. And ads are creeping into content more and more - ads inserted into the margins.
I got so damn sick of it that I can't believe more people aren't ditching their TVs. Do people STILL use TV? Still use Geocities? Still use Compuserve?
Even if the ads were a non-issue, this DRM/blacklist would drive me away.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I found this out when I got a TiVo Series 3. I noticed that every show I recorded, including ones that were deemed copyright cleared (eg: cable in the classroom) were marked as "Copy Restricted" on my TiVo. This means that the show cannot be saved or copied off the Tivo.
I found out this was because my cable company was setting the CCI flag to 0x2 for all channels in my cable system with the exception of local broadcast stations. This means my local cable company was overriding the wishes of the content provider (in this case Cable in the Classroom) and copy protecting the content.
Other people have been restricted from even recording a channel to TiVo because the CCI flag was set to 0x3.
When I complained to my cable provider, Comcast, about them blanketly applying the CCI flag of 0x2 to everything they basically told me to shut up and take it.
Everyone gleefully accepting this abrogation of their rights simply because they are elitists who don't watch the latest sitcom are even worse than people who don't understand the issues behind this.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
I assume this is about putting back in the broadcast flag, right?
After all the equipment that has been sold without the broadcast flag, I assume they can't start encrypting broadcast signals, right?
This is just their attempt to have all hardware/software respect the broadcast flag.
I bought a HDTV compatible PC card (http://www.pchdtv.com/) years ago when the broadcast flag was supposed to hit. It got repealed and my wife yelled at me. Now, maybe I should get a spare?
What do we do? Write our congressman?
I wish he'd at least fix my vertical hold. I'm getting dizzy watching this thing.
Have gnu, will travel.
Is someone out there hand-picking the keywords I have to type in? Or is this the slashdot "oracle" of delphi? "wearying"
Yeah I'm more into reading books and stuff. Screw the major media companies and their content. I'm sick of it. Let them lock their stuff up tight, so that nobody can see it. and it will flip, the minority will put up with their crap, and the majority will discover they never needed it, and it was a waste of time worrying about it...
I stopped watching TV 2 years ago. I think I'm better for it, even if my Tivo just sits in the corner.
No, you have it backward: property taxes are the most legitimate of all taxes. The primary (numero uno) purpose of government is protection of the homeland. In exchange for ownership of a slice of that homeland, you pay for a slice of that protection.
Going way back to the beginning of countries, a "country" is tantamount to a large piece of inhabited land. Normally, that land is allotted to owners, under the umbrella of a single governing agent. That system hasn't changed, ever. The thing that changed is that humanity developed modern economy, with goods and incomes and wealth which were substantial and separate from ownership of land, so we started taxing all those other things, too.
You aren't "renting" the land from the government, you are "paying" for soldiers to prevent invasions and loss of said land.
"1.3: Body Banks - we now purchase organs harvested from Chinese prisoners"
Really? How's that new penis working out for you?
This conference can be described as nothing less than a conspriacy to censor. After all, censorship is becoming America's favorite past-time. The US gov't (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like "America Deceived" America Deceived (book) from Wikipedia (who is now dealing with Fraud issues, right Essjay?), and fire 21-year tenured, BYU physics professor Steven Jones because he proved explosives, thermite in particular, took down the WTC buildings. Free Speech Forever.
Please tag this thread "mywife"
You know, there are many folks out there (myself included) who, for example, don't need to "see every blade of grass and every drop of sweat" (as the ESPN-HD promo goes) -- I just need to follow the ball and see the damn score. Good old analog TV is good enough for me, and even a 2nd or 3rd generation VHS dub of a program I very much want to see is fine with me.
So, for those who don't need digital quality, and just want to watch the damn show, there is a simple way to make a copy for future viewing that circumvents any "flags" anyone puts on the shit [sarcasm ON](read carefully -- it's quite technical)[sarcasm OFF]:
Get a good quality flat-screen monitor -- place decent-quality camcorder (even an old Hi-8 unit will do well) on tripod -- center screen image in viewfinder -- place microphone in front of speaker -- hit "record." Of course, you'll want to experiment with the best settings of contrast, ambient lighting, etc., but you can do that on some worthless piece of video (like, say, a Bush news conference).
Will it be perfect or even great quality? Nope -- but it will be watchable. I know, cos I've already experimented with this for future reference. I wouldn't recommend this for, say, an opera broadcast, but for the vast majority of televised pap, it will do just fine. Think of it as a "21st century kinescope."
And the best thing is -- there's not a damn thing the guvmint, the broadcasters, or the equipment manufacturers can do to thwart it.
Who needs HD anyway? Most TV programming doesn't benefit -- making the picture sharper doesn't improve the plotlines or the acting. And I don't need to see every pore on Bill O'Reilley's face to hate his pretentious guts just the same.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
In the UK, TV is controlled by the Independent Television Commission, now part of Ofcom. IMHO, they do a good job. There's not much censorship, just obvious things like not showing The Evil Dead before about 10pm. As long as issues are portrayed fairly, almost anything can be shown. Such as autopsy (Death Detectives) and Viagra on daytime TV (Richard & Judy). Even abortion is allowed: when My Foetus was shown in 2004, the ITC had this to say
The ITC also enforces a limit of 12 minutes of adverts per hour, and sets strict limits on direct fundraising. This month - for the first time - they allowed a religious TV station to appeal for funds directly from viewers.
As for technological measures, most people get the main 5 TV channels free (apart from the BBC license fee) through their aerial (rather than Sky or Cable). These people are being "encouraged" (ie forced) to switch to Digital TV, but once you've got a digibox (£30ish) that's free too.
That's how it works over here
We're talking quite a few dollars here. Not like phasing out the turntable for a CD player.
The moral of the story seems clear: if I don't want my hardware to become incompatible junk I'll quickly make friends with MythTV and a software HD card like the pcHDTV.
If they want to control my HDTV...then they can buy it for me!
YOUR TELEVISION CONTROLS YOU!
-insert a witty something-
"Do you know who owns or controls the station you're watching? Does the truth you know rely on its funding?"
Lyrics from MDFMK - (C)ontrol?
'You aren't "renting" the land from the government, you are "paying" for soldiers to prevent invasions and loss of said land.'
However if you don't pay up you get thrown out all the same.
09F9 1102 9D74 E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C0
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
...is "what tv?" :)
Liberty uber alles.
MCDonalds made a TurdBurger and nobody bought it
They did make make a TurdBurger. And nobody bought it. They called it the McRib. In all fairness, they planned for it to fail "for a Limited Time".
I'm in the UK, so I'm freaked! They are actually talking about fucking up *my* TV. G-buzz!
It sounds like Hollywood is using the EU et al as a test project before turning to the US market.
I get about 30 free digital channels via antennae, which are recorded to an iMac DVR. About 95% of the TV we watch is time-shifted. I archive any good BBC movies - there are no commercials, so I know the movies haven't been cut - and they're more or less DVD quality. I time-shift lots of documentaries too, which are my main source of knowing what's going on in the world. I archive the best of these too. The archive is about 1TB at the moment. I've never shared a show over the internet. In short, it's too much hassle.
The only thing I am sure of is that we won't be going back to old, non-timeshifted TV. That genie can't be put back in the bottle. That would be like going back to typewriters. If they effectively switch us off with DRM, I expect we will likely turn to user provided shows from the internet.
In any case, I'm not accepting any services with DRM anymore. I tried iTunes and stopped using it after one round of 'authorizations.' And iTunes DRM is lax. I just cancelled my DVD internet rentals as the provider introduced trailers (Microsoft DRM) and movie downloads (Microsoft DRM). DRM abuse is one thing, but paying extra for it is downright kinky.
About 3 or 4 years ago I mailed a 10 year old VHS tape of Max Hewadroom TV shows to a slashdotter in Central London. I have emigrated to Canada since then and would like my tape back please! (I now have the capability to digitise the programs)
I can arrange for someone to pick it up from you if you are reading this and have my tape!
You can email me using webmaster (at) my slashdot username (dot com)
Thanks, if the Gods are smiling upon me today.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
And let linux torvalds sort them out!
First off, rights are not a matter of "should" but of "is".
Second, they do indeed have such a right, precisely because those who don't like those conditions are free to do without.
If I'm selling it, I get to set the terms of sale. I might be willing to negotiate, but in the end if we don't reach an agreement that's acceptable to me I don't make the sale--just like if we don't reach an agreement that's acceptable to you you don't make the purchase.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"