By what right did the bus get to blindly keep going
Who said it was "blindly"? The car ran into the bus, which means the car had a much better view of the impending accident than the bus driver did. And even if the bus driver did see it coming, was he supposed to slam on the brakes or swerve into the next lane over to avoid it?
when there was a car in the same lane that was ahead of it?
You mean the car in the right side of a wide lane, with a right turn signal flashing, that was stopped until the bus was next to it? That car "in the same lane"?
only proceed itself when it is safe to do so. Which it obviously wasn't because the Google car was ahead of it.
Yes, I'd agree, when there is a Google car ahead of you, it is not safe to proceed.
but the benefit of the doubt should go to the car proceding cautiously at 2mph rather than one going 15 mph
Why? The car that pulled over into a bus is not at fault for pulling over into a bus? The car that was going so slow that it would have taken almost zero time to stop when it realized the bus was next to it, compared to a bus going 15 MPH, likely with passengers that had no seat belts? The bus didn't rear-end the Google car, the Google car pulled over into the bus. I think the benefit of the doubt goes to the vehicle doing the normal, regular operation, not the one doing something unusual.
the bus was behind and starting to pass the AV on the left side
To hit the side of a bus, it has to already be passing you.
The bus was in the wrong - it was passing another vehicle in the same lane.
The whole purpose of double-wide lanes is so that people making right turns don't impede people not making right turns. You don't need that extra space for any other purpose. If you can't go past someone making a right hand turn, then the whole reason for the lane is defeated.
And that ignores the question, did the car not see the bus or did the extra-smart computer just assume that the human would yield, as did the extra-smart human driver of said AV?
And you will wind up with the kind of legislation where wireless router manufacturers can't allow user firmware to be loaded because there's a radio involved.
I would find against the human, if the evidence showed that the human were in fact at fault.
Have you been on a bus that suddenly slammed on the brakes because a car just pulled out in front of it? And you'd find the bus driver at fault for not causing injuries to the bus passengers?
The AV was going two miles per hour. That means it was just starting up. The bus was going 15. That means it had been in motion for a much longer period of time. The amazing perfect computer car couldn't see the bus before pulling over, or did it just not care?
it was testing software that allowed it to make reasonable assumptions about other traffic as any sane driver would.
It is exactly this assumption of action on the part of other drivers that AV are supposed to remove from the excuses for accidents, not create more accidents because a computer can't guess what a human is going to do. You're saying that Google is actually making their AV more accident prone.
I can't see how any 'sane' AV would guess that a bus next to it is going to stop before it runs into the side of the bus. No sane human would make such an assumption about any vehicle, much less a bus that is already going by. And I don't think any sane human would guess that someone who had pulled into the right side of a double-wide lane (and was presumably signalling the right turn) would suddenly swerve left back into the main part of the lane. The reason the lane is so wide is to permit easier right turns without blocking straight through traffic -- to assume that everyone who is turning right is going to come back left removes the purpose for the lane in the first place.
And if the google car was going 2mph then the correct action is for the google car to stop for the sandbag rather than jump in front of a bus.
From the description in the summary, it sounds like the car ran into the side of the bus. It didn't jump in front of it, it sideswiped it as it tried to go around sandbags in its lane. Assuming that the bus was in its own lane, the car had to leave the lane it was in to do that.
Every discussion about safe driving I've seen in this forum has had the "safe" drivers claiming that the only safe thing to do is stop when faced with an impediment to traffic, not to try swerving around it. And the autonomous discussions have all claimed that AV will be safer than humans. Considering that the car was going just 2 MPH, I cannot imagine that it could not have stopped for the sandbags and waited until the next lane was clear, but I'm sure someone can explain why it didn't.
And the car "safety driver" assumed the bus would yield to him. I for one welcome our new robotic overlords.
Cisco once tried to get their users to configure their Linksys routers through "The Cloud".
Cisco still forces people to configure some of their switches through the cloud. I bought an MS220 (IIRC) and found it was busy transmitting my home network configuration (with a list of systems and MAC addresses) off to Cisco for some reason I can only guess at. This is to avoid having a full-featured web interface on the switch itself, and to gather target data about their users. Once I got it configured I blocked it at the router. If I ever power cycle it it will take a few minutes to come back online as a switch because it is busy trying to call home to Momma, but eventually it stops and does the job it was designed to do.
So someone needs to market an easy to use but otherwise secure home firewall device which has a dmz network to put questionable devices in, and an easily configured vpn that you can use to access things remotely...
Hi. I'm your customer. I just bought your easy to use firewall. What do you mean by "questionable device"? How do I know which devices are "questionable"? Isn't it much safer to put all my devices in this "questionable" category? I mean, I've heard so many bad things about Windows 10, surely it must be "questionable". But that means my entire home network is now in a "questionable" network. What's DMZ?
And VPN? Isn't that a television network? I'm very confused. But your device is marketed as "easy to use".
One of the most common is a UPnP IGD, which is a protocol for asking the router to pretty please forward a port for you.
Which would cause more cries of dismay do you think? Some average Joe finding out that his IoT device is reporting some trivial information to China, or Roger InternetGuru who found out his latest IoT is busy telling his firewall to create port forwarding rules without his knowledge or approval?
It is pretty much a requirement for this kind of thing given the normal NAT operation of most, if not many, home routers and internet connections. How can you monitor your front doorbell from your phone if your home network is behind a NAT router and your phone is on the cellular data network? No, how can Joe Regular User do it?
I am using a network power switch which does exactly this. It pings a server in China on a regular basis (3gstore.com). When I got my first status report from it, I wondered how it was reporting its external WAN address as part of its identification, and then I remembered that a long time ago I had monitored and detected this external traffic. I blocked the first three of these devices I was using at the router, but I decided it wasn't worth it when I added the last one.
Why add the extra leap year day to February of all the worst of months?
This! Yeah, adding another day of winter is just so depressing. They should add the day in July, maybe next to July 4 so we could have a four or five day weekend in the summer when it is nice and sunny and warm out.
But don't worry, in a few years it will be warm and sunny in February, and you won't want another day in July when it will be unbearably hot.
and then we get a little extra at the end of the year
I think there ought to be a system where we can bank extra days if we don't want to use them and let them roll over into the next year or maybe two years later. That way, if we're having a good year we can extend it by a week or two, and if we're having a bad year we can end it early.
Do you think it should take weeks of cooperation to move a single nail?
Pretending that it is "mov[ing] a single nail" to move everyone else's equipment on a pole to make room for your own is a bit disingenous.
Or should the job just get done with no harm to anyone?
If the job could be done with a guarantee of "no harm to anyone", sure.
If there's damages, sue for damages
So AT&T customers have to put up with the outages, AT&T has to pay extra for repair callouts, and the lawers get fat.
otherwise, just trust each other and get along.
If we could "just trust each other" there would be no need for any of the laws we have now. Do you really want to take the position that we should "just trust" large mega-corporations to cooperate with each other, especially when it will be the consumers who are the victims of any failure to do that?
Which just happens to be Google. It's discriminatory in favor of newcomers. The word still applies.
and AT&T can likely use this to their advantage when doing their own maintenance.
AT&T doesn't need to move everyone else around when they do maintenance. They already have space and equipment on the pole. And it creates just as much of a problem when you say that AT&T can do it -- do you think AT&T should be able to move Google's equipment around at their whim? Do you think AT&T really wants to have the liability that this would create?
AT&T wants to use that land rent free? Fine, they have to abide by the rules the city gives them.
They did.
But they also have the right to object to a change in the rules that allows Google installers to move AT&T equipment. What happens when Google installers "accidentally" break AT&T service when they move a cable?
If AT&T breaks their own stuff because screw it up when they move it to make space for Google, that's one thing. AT&T can schedule the moves in a systematic way and provide for enough people to do it. What this new ordinance creates is a situation where Google can come in and break AT&T services in 83 different places all at once. AT&T will find itself needing to bring in extra crews to take care of the problem that Google created.
No, AT&T is right on this one.
I've seen a few silly car analogies on this one, but here's one that is appropriate. Your street has public parking but doesn't have spaces marked. There's a section of street in front of your house that's just two car lengths long, and you park in the middle of that space. Can your neighbor hire a tow truck to push your car over to make space for him to park, or would you rather that he ask you to move a bit? What if that tow truck causes damage to your car? Allowing Google's installers to move AT&T equipment around is asking for trouble and solves nothing.
Unfortunately, that does not say that the access shall include the right to move, adjust, or modify any other carrier's equipment already installed upon that pole.
And in this case, when AT&T installed their equipment, the law said they had to get everyone else on the pole to come out and make space for them. Now the law says that Google can everyone else's stuff around without notification. This is discriminatory in Google's favor.
Well I can see a small problem, but one that can be overcome.
You don't see a big problem with one source of Internet being able to mess with another source's backbone without so much as a please or thank you?
How many times does someone's AT&T internet have to stop working before they might think "hmm, there's Google, a new player, maybe I'll try them"? You don't see an economic advantage to disrupting the other guy's services when you install your own identical service on the same pole?
Yes, eventually the broken service will be fixed. It will be at the expense of the existing company, with potential loss of customers to that company, and maybe eventually there will be a lawsuit to recover those damages, to the benefit of nobody but a cadre of lawyers.
The problem is that the new ordinance has language that allows Google to require AT&T to re-position AT&T equipment on the pole at AT&T's expense.
No, it seems that the ordinance removes the "requirement" for AT&T (or any other provider) to move their equipment, allowing Google to come in and move other company's equipment around.
The One Touch Ordinance is just that. With one touch, one visit, the company installing new equipment is able to move existing lines.
That's a recipe for lawsuits right there. Google hires someone to come in and move AT&Ts cables and AT&Ts service stops working. Oopsies. Sorry.
The fascinating part of the links is that Google isn't promising to come in and install fiber, and that AT&T is investigating their own gigabit installs. So both companies are looking at doing it, but neither one is promising anything.
As a Windows 10 user, you deserve every drop of this.
I know it sucks you can't use Linux, or OS X, or BSD, for some selection of applications
Blame the victim. Right.
I need Windows 10 because I support code that is used by people who use Windows 10. I cannot change what they do, and I like getting a paycheck, so I use Windows 10.
I appreciate that you think I deserve whatever happens because of that, but your opinion doesn't put food on my table, and it's pretty arrogant and just ridiculous.
Right now you kinda have other options- you can run 8.1 and be reasonably early in its support cycle,
Thanks for telling me what I can run. Isn't that the same kind of thing that Microsoft is doing with their changes to default programs (they are NOT "apps")? And tell me, how does paying Microsoft for an 8.1 upgrade help me support people who are running 10? Are you going to pay for my 8.1 upgrade?
you'll have to be careful to avoid the Windows 10 "upgrade", etc.
I didn't "have to be careful" to avoid the upgrade. All it took was deleting gwx.exe and everything else in that directory.
But at the end of the day, you paid for this, asked for this,
You are an ignorant, arrogant jerk, and that is putting it kindly.
This is a very bad solution. The US government should not be telling companies, domestic or foreign, what products they must make or what services they must provide. Telling VW they must provide charging stations for cars they don't want to make in the first place is just wrong.
But lets get real... hanging banners in a place you aren't supposed to is about as minor a crime as you can perform and still call it a "crime",
It is trespassing and potential destruction of government property. It's a crime. It may be a minor crime in your opinion, but still a crime.
And you ignored the point that they can be arresting these folks for that crime while still investigating whatever other crime it is that you are more concerned about, so the statement that these folks were arrested INSTEAD of the others is ridiculous. A more complicated, white-collar crime requires more investigation than a trespass, and you'd expect trespassers to be arrested sooner than an engineer that is eventually determined to be responsible for some gas leak. It's not shocking IN THE LEAST.
No. He's saying that someone who HAS a digital TV already has all the stuff a set-top box has built into it and shouldn't be forced to have a set-top box. He's wrong. There are things the set-top box has that the digital TV does not. And he's wrong in thinking that everyone is forced to have a set-top box. You can get cable service without one. They don't care if you have one or not.
They need to prohibit cable manufacturers from supplying boxes - i.e. you can buy service from them, but you can't get a box.
This creates exactly the same issues that the great AT&T breakup caused, and is demonstrated by the ability to provide CPE for cable internet, only worse.
Today, you can get everything you need in one stop, one call, from the cable company. They'll come out to install it, even. Yes, this costs more, but it means that Joe Sixpack doesn't have to know anything about the technology.
I have CPE for my cable modem. That means when I have to upgrade it, I have to know what models are compatible, and if it doesn't work who do I call? It's not Comcast's equipment, so they can point the finger at Motorola. Motorola can say it's the cable company's fault.
I've been through that game so many times since divestiture that it isn't funny, for failed phone service that I can tell them exactly where the problem is and how to fix it. But the phone company says "there will be a huge onsite service call charge if we find the issue is beyond the demarc", trying to divest themselves of the repair costs. Not their equipment in the home anymore, so a failed phone is not their problem.
And you want to prohibit the one-call solutions, so everyone will be forced to play the "it's the other guy's fault" game with the cable provider.
Slashdot Mirror
By what right did the bus get to blindly keep going
Who said it was "blindly"? The car ran into the bus, which means the car had a much better view of the impending accident than the bus driver did. And even if the bus driver did see it coming, was he supposed to slam on the brakes or swerve into the next lane over to avoid it?
when there was a car in the same lane that was ahead of it?
You mean the car in the right side of a wide lane, with a right turn signal flashing, that was stopped until the bus was next to it? That car "in the same lane"?
only proceed itself when it is safe to do so. Which it obviously wasn't because the Google car was ahead of it.
Yes, I'd agree, when there is a Google car ahead of you, it is not safe to proceed.
but the benefit of the doubt should go to the car proceding cautiously at 2mph rather than one going 15 mph
Why? The car that pulled over into a bus is not at fault for pulling over into a bus? The car that was going so slow that it would have taken almost zero time to stop when it realized the bus was next to it, compared to a bus going 15 MPH, likely with passengers that had no seat belts? The bus didn't rear-end the Google car, the Google car pulled over into the bus. I think the benefit of the doubt goes to the vehicle doing the normal, regular operation, not the one doing something unusual.
the bus was behind and starting to pass the AV on the left side
To hit the side of a bus, it has to already be passing you.
The bus was in the wrong - it was passing another vehicle in the same lane.
The whole purpose of double-wide lanes is so that people making right turns don't impede people not making right turns. You don't need that extra space for any other purpose. If you can't go past someone making a right hand turn, then the whole reason for the lane is defeated.
And that ignores the question, did the car not see the bus or did the extra-smart computer just assume that the human would yield, as did the extra-smart human driver of said AV?
with legislation:
And you will wind up with the kind of legislation where wireless router manufacturers can't allow user firmware to be loaded because there's a radio involved.
I would find against the human, if the evidence showed that the human were in fact at fault.
Have you been on a bus that suddenly slammed on the brakes because a car just pulled out in front of it? And you'd find the bus driver at fault for not causing injuries to the bus passengers?
The AV was going two miles per hour. That means it was just starting up. The bus was going 15. That means it had been in motion for a much longer period of time. The amazing perfect computer car couldn't see the bus before pulling over, or did it just not care?
it was testing software that allowed it to make reasonable assumptions about other traffic as any sane driver would.
It is exactly this assumption of action on the part of other drivers that AV are supposed to remove from the excuses for accidents, not create more accidents because a computer can't guess what a human is going to do. You're saying that Google is actually making their AV more accident prone.
I can't see how any 'sane' AV would guess that a bus next to it is going to stop before it runs into the side of the bus. No sane human would make such an assumption about any vehicle, much less a bus that is already going by. And I don't think any sane human would guess that someone who had pulled into the right side of a double-wide lane (and was presumably signalling the right turn) would suddenly swerve left back into the main part of the lane. The reason the lane is so wide is to permit easier right turns without blocking straight through traffic -- to assume that everyone who is turning right is going to come back left removes the purpose for the lane in the first place.
And if the google car was going 2mph then the correct action is for the google car to stop for the sandbag rather than jump in front of a bus.
From the description in the summary, it sounds like the car ran into the side of the bus. It didn't jump in front of it, it sideswiped it as it tried to go around sandbags in its lane. Assuming that the bus was in its own lane, the car had to leave the lane it was in to do that.
Every discussion about safe driving I've seen in this forum has had the "safe" drivers claiming that the only safe thing to do is stop when faced with an impediment to traffic, not to try swerving around it. And the autonomous discussions have all claimed that AV will be safer than humans. Considering that the car was going just 2 MPH, I cannot imagine that it could not have stopped for the sandbags and waited until the next lane was clear, but I'm sure someone can explain why it didn't.
And the car "safety driver" assumed the bus would yield to him. I for one welcome our new robotic overlords.
Cisco once tried to get their users to configure their Linksys routers through "The Cloud".
Cisco still forces people to configure some of their switches through the cloud. I bought an MS220 (IIRC) and found it was busy transmitting my home network configuration (with a list of systems and MAC addresses) off to Cisco for some reason I can only guess at. This is to avoid having a full-featured web interface on the switch itself, and to gather target data about their users. Once I got it configured I blocked it at the router. If I ever power cycle it it will take a few minutes to come back online as a switch because it is busy trying to call home to Momma, but eventually it stops and does the job it was designed to do.
So someone needs to market an easy to use but otherwise secure home firewall device which has a dmz network to put questionable devices in, and an easily configured vpn that you can use to access things remotely...
Hi. I'm your customer. I just bought your easy to use firewall. What do you mean by "questionable device"? How do I know which devices are "questionable"? Isn't it much safer to put all my devices in this "questionable" category? I mean, I've heard so many bad things about Windows 10, surely it must be "questionable". But that means my entire home network is now in a "questionable" network. What's DMZ?
And VPN? Isn't that a television network? I'm very confused. But your device is marketed as "easy to use".
One of the most common is a UPnP IGD, which is a protocol for asking the router to pretty please forward a port for you.
Which would cause more cries of dismay do you think? Some average Joe finding out that his IoT device is reporting some trivial information to China, or Roger InternetGuru who found out his latest IoT is busy telling his firewall to create port forwarding rules without his knowledge or approval?
I am using a network power switch which does exactly this. It pings a server in China on a regular basis (3gstore.com). When I got my first status report from it, I wondered how it was reporting its external WAN address as part of its identification, and then I remembered that a long time ago I had monitored and detected this external traffic. I blocked the first three of these devices I was using at the router, but I decided it wasn't worth it when I added the last one.
Why add the extra leap year day to February of all the worst of months?
This! Yeah, adding another day of winter is just so depressing. They should add the day in July, maybe next to July 4 so we could have a four or five day weekend in the summer when it is nice and sunny and warm out.
But don't worry, in a few years it will be warm and sunny in February, and you won't want another day in July when it will be unbearably hot.
and then we get a little extra at the end of the year
I think there ought to be a system where we can bank extra days if we don't want to use them and let them roll over into the next year or maybe two years later. That way, if we're having a good year we can extend it by a week or two, and if we're having a bad year we can end it early.
Do you think it should take weeks of cooperation to move a single nail?
Pretending that it is "mov[ing] a single nail" to move everyone else's equipment on a pole to make room for your own is a bit disingenous.
Or should the job just get done with no harm to anyone?
If the job could be done with a guarantee of "no harm to anyone", sure.
If there's damages, sue for damages
So AT&T customers have to put up with the outages, AT&T has to pay extra for repair callouts, and the lawers get fat.
otherwise, just trust each other and get along.
If we could "just trust each other" there would be no need for any of the laws we have now. Do you really want to take the position that we should "just trust" large mega-corporations to cooperate with each other, especially when it will be the consumers who are the victims of any failure to do that?
It's more just in favor of any newcomer.
Which just happens to be Google. It's discriminatory in favor of newcomers. The word still applies.
and AT&T can likely use this to their advantage when doing their own maintenance.
AT&T doesn't need to move everyone else around when they do maintenance. They already have space and equipment on the pole. And it creates just as much of a problem when you say that AT&T can do it -- do you think AT&T should be able to move Google's equipment around at their whim? Do you think AT&T really wants to have the liability that this would create?
AT&T wants to use that land rent free? Fine, they have to abide by the rules the city gives them.
They did.
But they also have the right to object to a change in the rules that allows Google installers to move AT&T equipment. What happens when Google installers "accidentally" break AT&T service when they move a cable?
If AT&T breaks their own stuff because screw it up when they move it to make space for Google, that's one thing. AT&T can schedule the moves in a systematic way and provide for enough people to do it. What this new ordinance creates is a situation where Google can come in and break AT&T services in 83 different places all at once. AT&T will find itself needing to bring in extra crews to take care of the problem that Google created.
No, AT&T is right on this one.
I've seen a few silly car analogies on this one, but here's one that is appropriate. Your street has public parking but doesn't have spaces marked. There's a section of street in front of your house that's just two car lengths long, and you park in the middle of that space. Can your neighbor hire a tow truck to push your car over to make space for him to park, or would you rather that he ask you to move a bit? What if that tow truck causes damage to your car? Allowing Google's installers to move AT&T equipment around is asking for trouble and solves nothing.
How to... mod presidential candidates as trolls?
By not voting for them. But it seems a lot of people are voting for Donald.
If this election were slashdot, the posting made by Donald would still be +5 even though it would have a lot of -1 Troll mods to go with it.
And in this case, when AT&T installed their equipment, the law said they had to get everyone else on the pole to come out and make space for them. Now the law says that Google can everyone else's stuff around without notification. This is discriminatory in Google's favor.
Well I can see a small problem, but one that can be overcome.
You don't see a big problem with one source of Internet being able to mess with another source's backbone without so much as a please or thank you?
How many times does someone's AT&T internet have to stop working before they might think "hmm, there's Google, a new player, maybe I'll try them"? You don't see an economic advantage to disrupting the other guy's services when you install your own identical service on the same pole?
Yes, eventually the broken service will be fixed. It will be at the expense of the existing company, with potential loss of customers to that company, and maybe eventually there will be a lawsuit to recover those damages, to the benefit of nobody but a cadre of lawyers.
The problem is that the new ordinance has language that allows Google to require AT&T to re-position AT&T equipment on the pole at AT&T's expense.
No, it seems that the ordinance removes the "requirement" for AT&T (or any other provider) to move their equipment, allowing Google to come in and move other company's equipment around.
That's a recipe for lawsuits right there. Google hires someone to come in and move AT&Ts cables and AT&Ts service stops working. Oopsies. Sorry.
The fascinating part of the links is that Google isn't promising to come in and install fiber, and that AT&T is investigating their own gigabit installs. So both companies are looking at doing it, but neither one is promising anything.
As a Windows 10 user, you deserve every drop of this. I know it sucks you can't use Linux, or OS X, or BSD, for some selection of applications
Blame the victim. Right.
I need Windows 10 because I support code that is used by people who use Windows 10. I cannot change what they do, and I like getting a paycheck, so I use Windows 10.
I appreciate that you think I deserve whatever happens because of that, but your opinion doesn't put food on my table, and it's pretty arrogant and just ridiculous.
Right now you kinda have other options- you can run 8.1 and be reasonably early in its support cycle,
Thanks for telling me what I can run. Isn't that the same kind of thing that Microsoft is doing with their changes to default programs (they are NOT "apps")? And tell me, how does paying Microsoft for an 8.1 upgrade help me support people who are running 10? Are you going to pay for my 8.1 upgrade?
you'll have to be careful to avoid the Windows 10 "upgrade", etc.
I didn't "have to be careful" to avoid the upgrade. All it took was deleting gwx.exe and everything else in that directory.
But at the end of the day, you paid for this, asked for this,
You are an ignorant, arrogant jerk, and that is putting it kindly.
This is a very good solution.
This is a very bad solution. The US government should not be telling companies, domestic or foreign, what products they must make or what services they must provide. Telling VW they must provide charging stations for cars they don't want to make in the first place is just wrong.
But lets get real... hanging banners in a place you aren't supposed to is about as minor a crime as you can perform and still call it a "crime",
It is trespassing and potential destruction of government property. It's a crime. It may be a minor crime in your opinion, but still a crime.
And you ignored the point that they can be arresting these folks for that crime while still investigating whatever other crime it is that you are more concerned about, so the statement that these folks were arrested INSTEAD of the others is ridiculous. A more complicated, white-collar crime requires more investigation than a trespass, and you'd expect trespassers to be arrested sooner than an engineer that is eventually determined to be responsible for some gas leak. It's not shocking IN THE LEAST.
You're assuming everyone has a digital TV.
No. He's saying that someone who HAS a digital TV already has all the stuff a set-top box has built into it and shouldn't be forced to have a set-top box. He's wrong. There are things the set-top box has that the digital TV does not. And he's wrong in thinking that everyone is forced to have a set-top box. You can get cable service without one. They don't care if you have one or not.
Every digital TV already has all the hardware it needs build in.
It doesn't necessarily have the upstream necessary to talk to the OD servers, and it doesn't have the decryption hardware built in.
They need to prohibit cable manufacturers from supplying boxes - i.e. you can buy service from them, but you can't get a box.
This creates exactly the same issues that the great AT&T breakup caused, and is demonstrated by the ability to provide CPE for cable internet, only worse.
Today, you can get everything you need in one stop, one call, from the cable company. They'll come out to install it, even. Yes, this costs more, but it means that Joe Sixpack doesn't have to know anything about the technology.
I have CPE for my cable modem. That means when I have to upgrade it, I have to know what models are compatible, and if it doesn't work who do I call? It's not Comcast's equipment, so they can point the finger at Motorola. Motorola can say it's the cable company's fault.
I've been through that game so many times since divestiture that it isn't funny, for failed phone service that I can tell them exactly where the problem is and how to fix it. But the phone company says "there will be a huge onsite service call charge if we find the issue is beyond the demarc", trying to divest themselves of the repair costs. Not their equipment in the home anymore, so a failed phone is not their problem.
And you want to prohibit the one-call solutions, so everyone will be forced to play the "it's the other guy's fault" game with the cable provider.
Except you can never buy the cable card, the cable company "rents" it to you at the same price that a cable box would cost to rent.
My cableCard from Comcast is free.
You can bet that any settop box solution that the FCC demands will have an encryption device that is not provided by the third party.
And thanks, slashdot, for stuffing ads onto the same page where the "disable advertising" checkbox is still checked.