. . . not unlike their somewhat heavy-handed tactics in pushing Windows 10 out (and pushing out updates), this is actually Microsoft's best answer to the perception that their product is buggy and exploit-prone.
Who gives a shit? I'll take buggy and exploit prone over treating the owner of the goddamn computer as a hostile enemy and/or a slave to be exploited any day!
Any company who decides their copyright should overrule the device owner's actual property rights must be destroyed for the good of society.
Because it would be AGAINST THE LAW. If Microsoft implemented DRM to disallow running non-"approved" programs and didn't "approve" Steam, Valve would have to break the DRM to make it work. Breaking DRM is a felony.
The DMCA and CFAA are assaults on the right to own property itself, because they subjugate the owner (of the computer)'s wishes to that of the copyright holder.
Sweeney may be correct in that even if Microsoft allows side loading, they can revoke it at any time and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
The real issue here is that it should have never gotten to the point where the vendor "allowing" something or not was possible in the first place. The owner of a device -- i.e., the user -- should have 100% complete control over every aspect of that device, full stop. All DRM should be illegal!
2. Impossible to charge per TV/device (Signal is 100% free past the filters)
Of those, probably #3 was the biggest issue at first. But they were sure excited to see what they could do with issue #2.
No shit. And that's exactly why the FCC shouldn't have allowed them to do it -- because charging per TV is FUCKING EVIL!
Unfortunately, there was a lack of regulation so the CableCard typically did not enable customers to used enhanced channel guides, video on demand, or other "premium" features.
Oh, bullshit! The CableCard spec was entirely within the control of Comcast and the rest of the cable cartel; if it lacked features it was entirely the fault of the cable companies themselves. In other words, they designed it to be inferior on purpose in order to drive cable box rentals.
And TV manufacturers could have made TVs that had CableCard built in.
No, no they couldn't. Cable Labs (wholly owned by the cable cartel) made it as difficult and expensive as fucking possible to make any CableCard-supporting device to be sold to consumers (as opposed to rented to them). CableCard was literally designed to fail.
But consumers WANT set top boxes because they want to be able to pause and rewind.
Bullshit. First of all, most cable boxes are the basic standard-def, no recording pieces of shit that have the lowest rental fee. Most of the rest are HD but non-DVR. Second, there's no reason you couldn't have put a DVR in a TV if you wanted. People never had the chance to buy such a thing because Cable Labs never allowed it to exist.
There's no demand for TVs with built in support for encrypted QAM.
There's no demand for encrypted QAM in the first place! People don't want to be treated as a hostile enemy by their electronics; they only accept it because the FUCKERS IN THE CABLE CARTEL force it down their throats until they choke on it!
Sure you could. You could do it exactly the same way the cable companies did it for analog cable: by putting filters on the line. They were just too goddamn cheap to keep doing it and wanted to pad their profit margin at the expense of consumer choice and market competition in TV-viewing hardware instead.
(The fact that cable boxes enabled Orwellian monitoring of viewing habits was an added bonus, of course.)
It was called "Clear QAM" and Comcast could have supported it at any time. The only reason it isn't is that the FCC has suffered regulatory capture and allowed Comcast to choose to encrypt, fucking over users of third-party tuners.
Let's say you do a web search, and you open several relevant-appearing results in the first page only to discover that most have only a paragraph of text at most followed by "Whitelist us or buy a month's subscription". If this becomes the new normal for more and more web search queries, what do you plan to do? Do you instead buy a month's subscription to read one article?
I'd find a search engine that heavily penalizes that sort of bullshit in its ranking algorithm.
I'm not sure why Libertardians can't figure out that actual liberals and progressives aren't tied to the thoroughly-corrupted Democratic party, we just don't have any viable alternatives in most elections.
No kidding. The really sad thing is that libertarian candidates could be that viable alternative, if they would just understand that the tragedy of the commons is a real thing and that government is a legitimate means of solving it, and tone down the economic extremism. Progressives and libertarians substantially agree on social policy (except for affirmative action), after all!
Yep. The doors on Star Trek are literally psychic: a character can run through them, let them close, and then lean against them instead of falling over because they re-opened.
Wake me up when there's software that runs on my own local server and can do all that without telling Amazon or Google all about my shopping preferences, schedule, movie preferences, lights, heat, and level of fitness.
Speaking of which... I use Google Voice VoIP for both my home phone (via an ObiTalk) and my cellphone (via Hangouts, currently). All I really want to know from this article is whether my setup is going to break or not. Unfortunately, it didn't say.
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That phrase is an oxymoron. Either it's copyright infringment or it's theft, but it cannot be both.
The copyright holder is not the owner. The Public Domain is the owner; the copyright holder is just borrowing it.
Who gives a shit? I'll take buggy and exploit prone over treating the owner of the goddamn computer as a hostile enemy and/or a slave to be exploited any day!
Any company who decides their copyright should overrule the device owner's actual property rights must be destroyed for the good of society.
Because it would be AGAINST THE LAW. If Microsoft implemented DRM to disallow running non-"approved" programs and didn't "approve" Steam, Valve would have to break the DRM to make it work. Breaking DRM is a felony.
The DMCA and CFAA are assaults on the right to own property itself, because they subjugate the owner (of the computer)'s wishes to that of the copyright holder.
So, killing Steam then? Because selling an app store in an app store doesn't make any goddamn sense.
(Not that killing Steam is a bad thing, mind you -- all DRM'd app stores are evil, including third-party ones.)
The real issue here is that it should have never gotten to the point where the vendor "allowing" something or not was possible in the first place. The owner of a device -- i.e., the user -- should have 100% complete control over every aspect of that device, full stop. All DRM should be illegal!
No shit. And that's exactly why the FCC shouldn't have allowed them to do it -- because charging per TV is FUCKING EVIL!
Oh, bullshit! The CableCard spec was entirely within the control of Comcast and the rest of the cable cartel; if it lacked features it was entirely the fault of the cable companies themselves. In other words, they designed it to be inferior on purpose in order to drive cable box rentals.
Or better yet, something that doesn't even have the string "rm" in it, like trash.
The surveillance infrastructure isn't fully set up yet. Just wait.
No, no they couldn't. Cable Labs (wholly owned by the cable cartel) made it as difficult and expensive as fucking possible to make any CableCard-supporting device to be sold to consumers (as opposed to rented to them). CableCard was literally designed to fail.
Bullshit. First of all, most cable boxes are the basic standard-def, no recording pieces of shit that have the lowest rental fee. Most of the rest are HD but non-DVR. Second, there's no reason you couldn't have put a DVR in a TV if you wanted. People never had the chance to buy such a thing because Cable Labs never allowed it to exist.
There's no demand for encrypted QAM in the first place! People don't want to be treated as a hostile enemy by their electronics; they only accept it because the FUCKERS IN THE CABLE CARTEL force it down their throats until they choke on it!
Over-the-air digital TV is ATSC, not QAM.
And yes, I cut the cord years ago. Fuck Comcast!
Sure you could. You could do it exactly the same way the cable companies did it for analog cable: by putting filters on the line. They were just too goddamn cheap to keep doing it and wanted to pad their profit margin at the expense of consumer choice and market competition in TV-viewing hardware instead.
(The fact that cable boxes enabled Orwellian monitoring of viewing habits was an added bonus, of course.)
It was called "Clear QAM" and Comcast could have supported it at any time. The only reason it isn't is that the FCC has suffered regulatory capture and allowed Comcast to choose to encrypt, fucking over users of third-party tuners.
Depends whether the Shengen Area of the EU counts as one country or many countries.
They're both authoritarian.
Hey now, stopped clocks are right twice a day. He might do something else you find appealing, eventually... maybe.
He was the authoritarian asshat most supportive of Jack Thompson's crusade against video games, among other things.
Holy fuck, you might actually have to TRAIN SOMEONE to do the job!
Instead of using an "ad blocker" that tries to be smart, I use uMatrix to block everything except what I specifically choose to whitelist.
In theory, you could use YaCy and adjust the algorithm yourself. Self-hosting my search is still on my "to-do" list (not my "done" list), though.
I'd find a search engine that heavily penalizes that sort of bullshit in its ranking algorithm.
No kidding. The really sad thing is that libertarian candidates could be that viable alternative, if they would just understand that the tragedy of the commons is a real thing and that government is a legitimate means of solving it, and tone down the economic extremism. Progressives and libertarians substantially agree on social policy (except for affirmative action), after all!
Yep. The doors on Star Trek are literally psychic: a character can run through them, let them close, and then lean against them instead of falling over because they re-opened.
Wake me up when there's software that runs on my own local server and can do all that without telling Amazon or Google all about my shopping preferences, schedule, movie preferences, lights, heat, and level of fitness.
Speaking of which... I use Google Voice VoIP for both my home phone (via an ObiTalk) and my cellphone (via Hangouts, currently). All I really want to know from this article is whether my setup is going to break or not. Unfortunately, it didn't say.