He's got a valid point, MythTV being an purely "Free" open-source project doesn't have these data collection issues. Then again, is a survey that confirms us something that we could have figured out just by guessing really that scary?
The scary thing is... the TiVo data surveys tend to prove that "we" rewind to any moment Britney Spears is on the screen, and "we" won't miss a minute of dumb reality shows...
Apparently, what people say they watch and actually watch are not the same sometimes...
It's possible that if somebody was watching illegal content, the cops could get a warrant, grab the TiVo, and then have a log of every remote click that the TiVo heard, even those for devices other than the TiVo.
Of course, the extent they could do this is very limited. TiVo units perge this data every time they make a call-in, and once the call is completed TiVo doesn't keep the association between the log file and who sent it unless they have flagged the user's account for support reasons. Also, I know of no real court cases where cops have actually tried to get TiVo data used as evidence...
So, if this is shocking news to you that TiVo was able to quickly crunch the data and figure out the most rewound moment of the Super Bowl broadcast, you haven't been paying attention. They had this capability for any massively watched program since day one. It was part of the design of the system.
TiVo offers a detailed data service to broadcasters which lets them see by timestamp within an episode what moments people watched, rewound, and skipped. Rumoredly, TechTV's The Screen Savers bought that service once for just one episode, and it ended up proving that their managers where right about what people wanted to see a little more than the actual content-making staff wanted to hear.
The Super Bowl most rewound moment is something TiVo's been doing for years, just for the sake of putting out a press release to get the TiVo name into conversations about what we were gonna be talking about anyway the week after the event... and from Slashdot's coverage over the years, it appears to have worked.
Where I work, cameras are strictly prohibited, and basically under no circumstances can I ever bring one inside the building - and a camera phone would be much worse... Quite frankly, I wish bluetooth was more prominent in cell phones - I would definitely use that a lot more - and not just for internet access, just syncing contacts and content - and a lot of stuff that doesn't fit on my SIM card that I may want to easily transport between phones.
If your work is security-concerned enough to want to ban cameras and very scared of camera phones, then a Bluetooth-enabled phone will have them reaching for their tin foil hats. I
If any Bluetooth device is ever hooked to the corperate network in any way, be it through USB to serve a keyboard or printer, or sitting inside a laptop, then that cell phone could connect to the PC through Bluetooth, and then repeat the data out to a public cell phone network. Basically, Bluetooth is a wide open connect to the outside world waiting to happen...
Your best hope may be the SIM chip... most phones that have those have the ability to store address books on the chip and in the phone's memory as well, so it should be possible to put the old chip in new phone, transfer the address book contents to the phone memory, then put in the new chip to work with the new provider, and away you go...
No, you really don't. You realize how stupid you look in public if you pick up your cell phone just to realize you're not the one ringing? That's why people like unique ringtones...
Security-aware organizations are facing more and more problems from technology and the concept of "information wants to be free"... not that it means "without charge", but that its getting harder and harder to keep secret information from leaking out.
Bluetooth could also be a serious problem, because theoretically a transceiver for a Bluetooth keyboard or printer could also host a Bluetooth connection to a cell phone... and that cell phone could then route data out to the cell network and from there it can go anywhere.
Nope. We're getting close to the point that a low-level cell phone will have a color display and enough computing power to play Pac-Man.
386 computers are still useful, but you won't find anybody selling new 386 chips anymore. They're outdated, and it's cheaper to just take a 1 GHz chip and barely use it than to try to find working old parts...
In theory, one could make a Bluetooth device that itself has no interface other than Bluetooth and whatever celluar network system, and then depend on other devices for the microphone, speaker, etc.
However, the cost of including a microphone, speaker, and small display, especially in mass-marketed form, is so small I just can't see that happening. It'll be cheaper for the cell phone makers to just hand you a standard cell phone with Bluetooth, and just tell you to ignore the features you don't want or need.
There's really no other way for the cell phone companies to compete on price, they've pretty much hit the floor on pricing. Therefore, the price points are remaining the same, and the higher end model phones are simply moving to the lower price points.
Getting camera phones into consumer's hands, whether they really want them or not, is also the best hope the cell providers have to sell their data services. The cellular data structure is pretty much already in place at all of the wireless companies, but there aren't very many people using it. Camera phones are great ways to create a 1-megabyte file which then to get out of the phone requires use of the cell data network... notice that provider-subsidized cell phones never have a USB output through which the picture can travel?
Most cell phones have had at least small-scale games on board for years. Nothing advanced, but simple enough things that can keep you occupied during a really boring airport wait. Now, as the processing power increases and the color screens are more common, it's not surprising that the games are getting a little more attention. The new trend is the color screens and cameras, games were already on board.
If somebody can afford to send a mail list to X many people Y times a week, then that'll be the same price as sending a spam message to X many people Y times a week.
If you set the computational price too high, you've killed all mailing lists, and set it too low and and spam will still exist...
And then they won't be in the whitelist, and they won't be able to reach users of Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, and presumably AOL, Earthlink and the like will also join in on this.
In short, it'll be a closed e-mail system where every user is passing through a lameness filter, and every provider has some way to trace back the user should accountablity ever be need...
Sorry, allowing anonymous e-mail allows spam... no way to kill one without killing the other.
They don't stop it, but they certainly limit it. Also, postal regulations prevent many messages that are cent as spam from being sent in an unsolicited ad.
Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it free. Operating an e-mail server costs money, you have to plug it into a wall and we all know power isn't free. You also have to plug it into a computer network, and we all know those aren't free. You also have to plug that network into an Internet connection, and we all know those aren't free either.
It's the fact that e-mail has no per-message unit of charge that makes it appear free, and why e-mail lists you want to be on are so cheap to operate, and spam you don't want to get is so cheap to throw at you. It's hard to raise the cost of one without raising the cost of the other.
However, e-mail lists can simply convert to a pull-based mechanism such as a web page or RSS... so I think e-mail list operators who shout down anti-spam measures that interfere with their current operations are just being lazy, they can convert their subscribers to other delivery methods if they want to.
Let's just point out that NASA TV is not on DirecTV's main satellite, so the smallest dishes that only look at one satellite location will not be able to find it. You'll need one of the more complex DirecTV setups to get NASA TV if that's a dealbreaker...
Which basically meant it in total cost about $20-30 Million to run between the smaller prizes that were awarded, the transportation of the 1000 qualifiers for a free trip to Florida, and the staging of the TV show that actually awarded closer to $2 million in real prizes.
Not even, Pepsi can print 100 million codes and safely assume that only 20% are going to actually be turned in... therefore Pepsi hands a $20 million check to Apple and it's all settled.
$20-30 million isn't out of line for a soft drink promotion... remember the "Play For a Billion" game that Pepsi ran last summer, and will likely repeat this year. This contest just gives out a lot of little prizes instead of having any big ones.
What Pepsi is effectively giving away is 99 cent gift certificates to iTunes Music Store... which can be used to download any song on the service. Reportedly, Pepsi will be paying Apple the full 99 cents for every code that gets turned in...
Rumor has it that Pepsi is paying the full 99 cents for each bottle-cap code that actually gets redeemed, and 1/3 of specially marked bottles will have a redeemable code.
Wouldn't a better plan be to link to some of the better indie artists on the service and tell people to download their songs, therefore allowing people to actually listen to the music their code purchased?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but would TiVo bother to report survey data that when the margin of is error factored in leads to the possiblity that negative people did that?
Sorry, the broadcast specifically said we would need the express written permission of the NFL to redistribute any part of it...
Hehe... a +3 Troll...
He's got a valid point, MythTV being an purely "Free" open-source project doesn't have these data collection issues. Then again, is a survey that confirms us something that we could have figured out just by guessing really that scary?
The scary thing is... the TiVo data surveys tend to prove that "we" rewind to any moment Britney Spears is on the screen, and "we" won't miss a minute of dumb reality shows...
Apparently, what people say they watch and actually watch are not the same sometimes...
It's possible that if somebody was watching illegal content, the cops could get a warrant, grab the TiVo, and then have a log of every remote click that the TiVo heard, even those for devices other than the TiVo.
Of course, the extent they could do this is very limited. TiVo units perge this data every time they make a call-in, and once the call is completed TiVo doesn't keep the association between the log file and who sent it unless they have flagged the user's account for support reasons. Also, I know of no real court cases where cops have actually tried to get TiVo data used as evidence...
TiVo Watches the Super Bowl... oh, wait, that was about TiVo and the Super Bowl of Two years ago...
/. by...
See, TiVo's had their semi-permeable privacy policy since they started, as documented on
TiVo Data Collection Ramifications
TiVo To Sell Customer Data
Nielsen to measure TiVo usage
So, if this is shocking news to you that TiVo was able to quickly crunch the data and figure out the most rewound moment of the Super Bowl broadcast, you haven't been paying attention. They had this capability for any massively watched program since day one. It was part of the design of the system.
TiVo offers a detailed data service to broadcasters which lets them see by timestamp within an episode what moments people watched, rewound, and skipped. Rumoredly, TechTV's The Screen Savers bought that service once for just one episode, and it ended up proving that their managers where right about what people wanted to see a little more than the actual content-making staff wanted to hear.
The Super Bowl most rewound moment is something TiVo's been doing for years, just for the sake of putting out a press release to get the TiVo name into conversations about what we were gonna be talking about anyway the week after the event... and from Slashdot's coverage over the years, it appears to have worked.
Where I work, cameras are strictly prohibited, and basically under no circumstances can I ever bring one inside the building - and a camera phone would be much worse... Quite frankly, I wish bluetooth was more prominent in cell phones - I would definitely use that a lot more - and not just for internet access, just syncing contacts and content - and a lot of stuff that doesn't fit on my SIM card that I may want to easily transport between phones.
If your work is security-concerned enough to want to ban cameras and very scared of camera phones, then a Bluetooth-enabled phone will have them reaching for their tin foil hats. I
If any Bluetooth device is ever hooked to the corperate network in any way, be it through USB to serve a keyboard or printer, or sitting inside a laptop, then that cell phone could connect to the PC through Bluetooth, and then repeat the data out to a public cell phone network. Basically, Bluetooth is a wide open connect to the outside world waiting to happen...
Your best hope may be the SIM chip... most phones that have those have the ability to store address books on the chip and in the phone's memory as well, so it should be possible to put the old chip in new phone, transfer the address book contents to the phone memory, then put in the new chip to work with the new provider, and away you go...
No, you really don't. You realize how stupid you look in public if you pick up your cell phone just to realize you're not the one ringing? That's why people like unique ringtones...
Security-aware organizations are facing more and more problems from technology and the concept of "information wants to be free"... not that it means "without charge", but that its getting harder and harder to keep secret information from leaking out.
Bluetooth could also be a serious problem, because theoretically a transceiver for a Bluetooth keyboard or printer could also host a Bluetooth connection to a cell phone... and that cell phone could then route data out to the cell network and from there it can go anywhere.
Nope. We're getting close to the point that a low-level cell phone will have a color display and enough computing power to play Pac-Man.
386 computers are still useful, but you won't find anybody selling new 386 chips anymore. They're outdated, and it's cheaper to just take a 1 GHz chip and barely use it than to try to find working old parts...
In theory, one could make a Bluetooth device that itself has no interface other than Bluetooth and whatever celluar network system, and then depend on other devices for the microphone, speaker, etc.
However, the cost of including a microphone, speaker, and small display, especially in mass-marketed form, is so small I just can't see that happening. It'll be cheaper for the cell phone makers to just hand you a standard cell phone with Bluetooth, and just tell you to ignore the features you don't want or need.
There's really no other way for the cell phone companies to compete on price, they've pretty much hit the floor on pricing. Therefore, the price points are remaining the same, and the higher end model phones are simply moving to the lower price points.
Getting camera phones into consumer's hands, whether they really want them or not, is also the best hope the cell providers have to sell their data services. The cellular data structure is pretty much already in place at all of the wireless companies, but there aren't very many people using it. Camera phones are great ways to create a 1-megabyte file which then to get out of the phone requires use of the cell data network... notice that provider-subsidized cell phones never have a USB output through which the picture can travel?
Most cell phones have had at least small-scale games on board for years. Nothing advanced, but simple enough things that can keep you occupied during a really boring airport wait. Now, as the processing power increases and the color screens are more common, it's not surprising that the games are getting a little more attention. The new trend is the color screens and cameras, games were already on board.
The paradox this solution hit is as follows...
If somebody can afford to send a mail list to X many people Y times a week, then that'll be the same price as sending a spam message to X many people Y times a week.
If you set the computational price too high, you've killed all mailing lists, and set it too low and and spam will still exist...
And then they won't be in the whitelist, and they won't be able to reach users of Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, and presumably AOL, Earthlink and the like will also join in on this.
In short, it'll be a closed e-mail system where every user is passing through a lameness filter, and every provider has some way to trace back the user should accountablity ever be need...
Sorry, allowing anonymous e-mail allows spam... no way to kill one without killing the other.
They don't stop it, but they certainly limit it. Also, postal regulations prevent many messages that are cent as spam from being sent in an unsolicited ad.
Just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it free. Operating an e-mail server costs money, you have to plug it into a wall and we all know power isn't free. You also have to plug it into a computer network, and we all know those aren't free. You also have to plug that network into an Internet connection, and we all know those aren't free either.
It's the fact that e-mail has no per-message unit of charge that makes it appear free, and why e-mail lists you want to be on are so cheap to operate, and spam you don't want to get is so cheap to throw at you. It's hard to raise the cost of one without raising the cost of the other.
However, e-mail lists can simply convert to a pull-based mechanism such as a web page or RSS... so I think e-mail list operators who shout down anti-spam measures that interfere with their current operations are just being lazy, they can convert their subscribers to other delivery methods if they want to.
Let's just point out that NASA TV is not on DirecTV's main satellite, so the smallest dishes that only look at one satellite location will not be able to find it. You'll need one of the more complex DirecTV setups to get NASA TV if that's a dealbreaker...
Which basically meant it in total cost about $20-30 Million to run between the smaller prizes that were awarded, the transportation of the 1000 qualifiers for a free trip to Florida, and the staging of the TV show that actually awarded closer to $2 million in real prizes.
Not even, Pepsi can print 100 million codes and safely assume that only 20% are going to actually be turned in... therefore Pepsi hands a $20 million check to Apple and it's all settled.
$20-30 million isn't out of line for a soft drink promotion... remember the "Play For a Billion" game that Pepsi ran last summer, and will likely repeat this year. This contest just gives out a lot of little prizes instead of having any big ones.
What Pepsi is effectively giving away is 99 cent gift certificates to iTunes Music Store... which can be used to download any song on the service. Reportedly, Pepsi will be paying Apple the full 99 cents for every code that gets turned in...
Rumor has it that Pepsi is paying the full 99 cents for each bottle-cap code that actually gets redeemed, and 1/3 of specially marked bottles will have a redeemable code.
Why does this group want the codes given to them?
Wouldn't a better plan be to link to some of the better indie artists on the service and tell people to download their songs, therefore allowing people to actually listen to the music their code purchased?
That doesn't quite get to the point. Who is Downhill Battle and why should we trust them?