Frankly, this whole story is a troll. Do people really think their phone is off while it is playing music, accepting calls, and vibrating every time an email come in?
But to your point, the iPhone has a (widely publicized) "airplane mode" feature, which turns off all the radios.
Also, you can turn it off, by pressing both hard buttons and then sliding the slider that says "slide to power off". Apple calls the button that this user seems to have mistaken for the power button the "sleep/wake" button.
Is it your position that there shouldn't ever be sleep/wake buttons because users are too fucking stupid to differentiate between "sleep" and "off"? And that it is reasonable for a user to believe that a phone that is ready to receive calls is off?
Let's stipulate that everything you say is true, just for the sake of argument. That still leaves me with a two word retort:
Due diligence.
Maybe "the bad guys" have some super-agent that can crack any espionage target. What world do you live in where you think the powers will (or should!) throw up there hands and say, "Hey, your privacy is more important than any of this shit we're doing. We don't care if you raise chickens as sex slaves and applied for Afghani citizenship last month."?
If you peruse my website and/or posting history you'll see that I'm against almost everything the government does. That said . . .
I held a TS with SBI once upon a time. The main reason for background checks, as I understand it, is to ferret out any levers that could be used against you by hostile agent. Too much debt? We'll get you out of trouble if you give us info. Cheating on your wife? With a man?! It would be a shame if we had to call her. Think of your kids.
It's not that they're morally judging you, its that they're making sure that you're not unduly susceptible to influence.
Interesting. After several careful readings, I believe that you are correct. I continued down the path of using "bound" the original poster started.
But you are splitting hairs a bit. My point is that only the copyright holder can distribute without regard to the responsibilities under the GPL. And I think that point stands.
She noted RAM's function as primary storage and that the storage of data in RAM--even if not permanently archived--makes it electronically stored information governed by federal discovery rules.
But this is the rub: the usual and customary retention period for these data is on a scale of miliseconds. No clear-headed judge would suggest that someone should have to retain a discoverable document billions of times the customary period.
I don't know who modded this up, but the question doesn't make any sense. People who make GPL software aren't bound by the GPL with regards to their own software.
The GPL applies to anyone who distributes covered software and doesn't own the copyrights.
Active misrepresentation in order to support your conclusions makes you a propagandist, not a documentarian.
One concrete example. A friend of mine told me that when a person opens a bank account in Texas the government gives that person a gun. Beyond the fact that this obviously fails the sniff test, I had lived in Texas fairly recently, had opened several bank accounts, and had to buy all my guns.
So I saw Fahrenheit 9/11. Okay, so she misunderstood the facts, even as Moore represented them. In fact I recognized the program, which isn't limited to Texas, immediately. He did make it seem like something insidious.
Then I saw a film called Fahrenhype 9/11, which purports to debunk Fahrenheit 9/11. Say what you will about the makers of that film, it contained a bunch of footage of the people at the bank in Fahrenheit 9/11 complaining that Moore misrepresented what happened.
Here's the key bit. He asked them to bring the gun in from there warehouse and put it in the vault. They cooperated in good faith. He coached them to sort of play along with his questions. Again, they cooperated. He then asked leading questions on tape, creating the impression that the guns are stored on the premises.
Do you contend that that sort of practice is normal and/or acceptable in documentary film making?
Another good example from those two films. In the bit where Bush quips about the "Haves and the Have Mores" Moore paints him as an elitist. Turns out that Al Gore was a few chairs away, and Moore cropped him out. Is one of us confused about what "document" means?
I think you've mistaken me for a Republican. Silly Spudtrooper!
I think it is interesting that I ascribed Moore to a wacko minority of the left, but you make no such concession to the right regarding Fox. A better analogy would have been to compare to Limbaugh. I wouldn't want my country judged by what either one of those blowhards has to say.
To explicitly answer your question, my point is that a person does himself a disservice to judge the US by what some axe-grinding jerk says about it. Sorry that wasn't clear enough for you.
Regarding your sig*, many are under the false impression that Michael Moore is a documentarian. I assure you he is not. He makes a sort of intellectual pornography for the shrill faction of the American political left.
Learning about America from his films would be very much like learning about sex from pornography. Everything is basically correct, but you're left with entirely the wrong impression.
Don't be embarrassed about your misunderstanding. It's quite common here in the States as well.
-Peter
* For the record, at the time of this post his sig is, "After watching Sycko[sic] now I am very afraid to live in the USA. How can you live there?"
So your position is that you understand their business better than they do? That they need to sacrifice important (to them) new features to maintain their least profitable customers?
You know your analog TV tuners are going to stop working with over-the-air broadcasts in less than a year and a half, right? Have you considered that maybe you're being a Luddite?
I don't have any sort of TV service. I don't see the value proposition. I think we are in basic agreement there. Maybe you'd be happier just not having cable. (Like me!)
All Dish Network boxes are Echostar boxes. Your parents have a DirecTV box not made by DirecTV.
The upshot is that DirecTV has no control over the box, so they can't push out any sort of middleware, like OpenTV (I work for OpenTV) or OCAP. No middleware, no interactivity.
DVB is more "open" than DSS, but DirecTV's overall platform is more open in that they allow 3rd party boxes.
As for interactive services, you might be more interested than you think. If you find yourself sitting in front of a TV on Dish Network hit the silver "dish" button on the remote and check it out.
It's easy to find nasty things to say about the cable industry. I won't argue with you.
That said, any industry wide standard (in any fast-moving industry) is going to be shot by the time it hits the street. If they put every pie-in-the-sky feature into CableCARD you'd be crying that doubles the cost of the TV.
Also, it isn't cheap for an operator to roll out a new feature. Ever. Retiring STB models is fantastically expensive. Implementing new features in software on existing models isn't cheap either.
I don't know if they are living up to the FCC rule or not. If not, then they assuredly should be held responsible. If you're suggesting the FCC should prevent operators from rolling out new features because the FCC mandate didn't anticipate them I'd say that's a pretty backward point of view.
Also, you want "ensure".
The cable company seems to think that revenue streams from PPV and VOD are their sacred right, and allowing a box that doesn't have these features is unthinkable.
Well, I can't blame them for trying to lock in revenue, or blame you for trying to cut them out.
For the second part, you seem to have forgotten that the programmers largely drive CA. If you could get your favorite show from your favorite channel onto a non-secure box trivially, then your favorite channel would drop your cable operator.
I couldn't be more certain that if that happened you'd be grousing about how your operator fucked you over.
Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to make any sort of qualitative statement about the situation. But now I am going to argue with you just a bit.
DirectTV uses open boxes. Echostar uses proprietary boxes. DirectTV is basically dead in the water when it comes to any sort of interactive service. (As far as I know, they can't even do push-VOD.) I'm pretty sure that Echostar is the world leader in interactive STB deployments. I think that this does give the customer some value.
If that's the case, then the benefits of monopolizing the user interface must be sufficient to justify these costs.
Yup. That's how I make my living.
But they should be allowed only the control they need to ensure efficient delivery to customers according to the terms of the service agreements with those customers.
Allowed by whom? I hate that cable is a series of local monopolies, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. Right or wrong, the operators feel they need this control, largely due to pressure from the programmers.
It's helpful to remember that, in the scheme of things, TV viewers are the product and advertisers are the customer.
Telephone companies have had to address this issue. Its about time the cable companies did as well.
Interesting. The telephone network you seem to be talking about is still analog at the terminal equipment. For practical purposes TV has made the switch to digital, but telephony has only gotten there through various end-runs (VoIP and cell) around this network you hold up as an example.
For all its warts, the cable industry is trying to deliver more to the customer. What have the phone carriers done for us lately? Caller ID is the latest "big feature" those dinosaurs have given us.
Terminal equipment on the phone network is infinitely simpler than contemporary TV. If the Satellite and Cable operators were forced to only use open boxes they'd only be able to offer the services available on a large portion of those boxes.
That very well could be a better thing in the long run, but in the short run it would mean fewer features for the customer.
I don't want my 'experience' controlled by anything other than my remote control. I like the menus and program guides on my TV set a lot better then the crap the cable company generates.
That's cool that you find your TV so satisfying. Does is support push-VOD? Or Switched Digital? Or some other feature that someone just dreamed up yesterday and will be pushed out to operator-owned STBs in a year?
I don't want my 'experience' controlled by anything other than my remote control. [again]
Your comment reveals a deep misunderstanding about what's going on. Is it your position that your operator should support any and all features your particular TV manufacturer chooses to implement in your particular TV model? (Which implies that the manufacturer has a better idea of how to get the most value out of the network than the operator does!) What about what my TV manufacturer thinks?!
And when some subtlety in your particular TV's implementation of some feature doesn't work with the operator's, who fixes it? Why should the operator change it if it works for every other TV on the network? Why should the manufacturer care if it works on other networks?
Why not allow customers to pick and choose the services and features they desire?
That's an easy one! It costs them to control who has access to a feature, but costs them nothing extra to roll it out to everyone. These features are dependent on software in the STB.
You don't seem to realize that these features are either custom software on the STB, or network features that are accessed by . . . custom software on the STB. If that doesn't clarify why they want to control the STB for you, I don't think anything will!
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, opt-in makes the most sense.
-Peter
Very nicely done. Wish I had mod points.
-Peter
I can't believe this got modded up.
Frankly, this whole story is a troll. Do people really think their phone is off while it is playing music, accepting calls, and vibrating every time an email come in?
But to your point, the iPhone has a (widely publicized) "airplane mode" feature, which turns off all the radios.
Also, you can turn it off, by pressing both hard buttons and then sliding the slider that says "slide to power off". Apple calls the button that this user seems to have mistaken for the power button the "sleep/wake" button.
Is it your position that there shouldn't ever be sleep/wake buttons because users are too fucking stupid to differentiate between "sleep" and "off"? And that it is reasonable for a user to believe that a phone that is ready to receive calls is off?
-Peter
I'm not a big fan of silicone implants, but silicon implants are HOT!
-Peter
Really? I guess I assumed one could sue for damages if he could show someone violated his copyrights. What's the point, otherwise?
-Peter
In case you're unclear, copyrights are automatic in the US. But filing your work makes your life immeasurably easier if there is ever a dispute.
This is one of those few government services I believe to be legitimate.
-Peter
I'm kind of on thin ice here, but I don't think I'm going too far by describing your post as, "Adorably naïve."
-Peter
Put that on the ballot and I'll vote for it!
-Peter
Let's stipulate that everything you say is true, just for the sake of argument. That still leaves me with a two word retort:
Due diligence.
Maybe "the bad guys" have some super-agent that can crack any espionage target. What world do you live in where you think the powers will (or should!) throw up there hands and say, "Hey, your privacy is more important than any of this shit we're doing. We don't care if you raise chickens as sex slaves and applied for Afghani citizenship last month."?
-Peter
If you peruse my website and/or posting history you'll see that I'm against almost everything the government does. That said . . .
I held a TS with SBI once upon a time. The main reason for background checks, as I understand it, is to ferret out any levers that could be used against you by hostile agent. Too much debt? We'll get you out of trouble if you give us info. Cheating on your wife? With a man?! It would be a shame if we had to call her. Think of your kids.
It's not that they're morally judging you, its that they're making sure that you're not unduly susceptible to influence.
It's not fair, but it's not about fairness.
-Peter
That's one point of view . . .
-Peter
Yeah, I realized the literal interpretation as soon as I posted that. Usually make an effort to keep the gametes apart, though.
-Peter
I thought I was into some kinky shit, but I never tried to stick my genome into someone.
-Peter
Interesting. After several careful readings, I believe that you are correct. I continued down the path of using "bound" the original poster started.
But you are splitting hairs a bit. My point is that only the copyright holder can distribute without regard to the responsibilities under the GPL. And I think that point stands.
-Peter
But this is the rub: the usual and customary retention period for these data is on a scale of miliseconds. No clear-headed judge would suggest that someone should have to retain a discoverable document billions of times the customary period.
-Peter
I don't know who modded this up, but the question doesn't make any sense. People who make GPL software aren't bound by the GPL with regards to their own software.
The GPL applies to anyone who distributes covered software and doesn't own the copyrights.
-Peter
Does this mean they can subpoena the contents of the white board in conference nine at 7:23 AM on June the 13, 2005?
Why can't the court grasp the transient nature of the content of RAM?
-Peter
Active misrepresentation in order to support your conclusions makes you a propagandist, not a documentarian.
One concrete example. A friend of mine told me that when a person opens a bank account in Texas the government gives that person a gun. Beyond the fact that this obviously fails the sniff test, I had lived in Texas fairly recently, had opened several bank accounts, and had to buy all my guns.
So I saw Fahrenheit 9/11. Okay, so she misunderstood the facts, even as Moore represented them. In fact I recognized the program, which isn't limited to Texas, immediately. He did make it seem like something insidious.
Then I saw a film called Fahrenhype 9/11, which purports to debunk Fahrenheit 9/11. Say what you will about the makers of that film, it contained a bunch of footage of the people at the bank in Fahrenheit 9/11 complaining that Moore misrepresented what happened.
Here's the key bit. He asked them to bring the gun in from there warehouse and put it in the vault. They cooperated in good faith. He coached them to sort of play along with his questions. Again, they cooperated. He then asked leading questions on tape, creating the impression that the guns are stored on the premises.
Do you contend that that sort of practice is normal and/or acceptable in documentary film making?
Another good example from those two films. In the bit where Bush quips about the "Haves and the Have Mores" Moore paints him as an elitist. Turns out that Al Gore was a few chairs away, and Moore cropped him out. Is one of us confused about what "document" means?
-Peter
I think you've mistaken me for a Republican. Silly Spudtrooper!
I think it is interesting that I ascribed Moore to a wacko minority of the left, but you make no such concession to the right regarding Fox. A better analogy would have been to compare to Limbaugh. I wouldn't want my country judged by what either one of those blowhards has to say.
To explicitly answer your question, my point is that a person does himself a disservice to judge the US by what some axe-grinding jerk says about it. Sorry that wasn't clear enough for you.
-Peter
Regarding your sig*, many are under the false impression that Michael Moore is a documentarian. I assure you he is not. He makes a sort of intellectual pornography for the shrill faction of the American political left.
Learning about America from his films would be very much like learning about sex from pornography. Everything is basically correct, but you're left with entirely the wrong impression.
Don't be embarrassed about your misunderstanding. It's quite common here in the States as well.
-Peter
* For the record, at the time of this post his sig is, "After watching Sycko[sic] now I am very afraid to live in the USA. How can you live there?"
So your position is that you understand their business better than they do? That they need to sacrifice important (to them) new features to maintain their least profitable customers?
You know your analog TV tuners are going to stop working with over-the-air broadcasts in less than a year and a half, right? Have you considered that maybe you're being a Luddite?
I don't have any sort of TV service. I don't see the value proposition. I think we are in basic agreement there. Maybe you'd be happier just not having cable. (Like me!)
-Peter
All Dish Network boxes are Echostar boxes. Your parents have a DirecTV box not made by DirecTV.
The upshot is that DirecTV has no control over the box, so they can't push out any sort of middleware, like OpenTV (I work for OpenTV) or OCAP. No middleware, no interactivity.
DVB is more "open" than DSS, but DirecTV's overall platform is more open in that they allow 3rd party boxes.
As for interactive services, you might be more interested than you think. If you find yourself sitting in front of a TV on Dish Network hit the silver "dish" button on the remote and check it out.
-Peter
Why do they have to do that?
-Peter
That said, any industry wide standard (in any fast-moving industry) is going to be shot by the time it hits the street. If they put every pie-in-the-sky feature into CableCARD you'd be crying that doubles the cost of the TV.
Also, it isn't cheap for an operator to roll out a new feature. Ever. Retiring STB models is fantastically expensive. Implementing new features in software on existing models isn't cheap either.
I don't know if they are living up to the FCC rule or not. If not, then they assuredly should be held responsible. If you're suggesting the FCC should prevent operators from rolling out new features because the FCC mandate didn't anticipate them I'd say that's a pretty backward point of view.
Also, you want "ensure".
Well, I can't blame them for trying to lock in revenue, or blame you for trying to cut them out.
For the second part, you seem to have forgotten that the programmers largely drive CA. If you could get your favorite show from your favorite channel onto a non-secure box trivially, then your favorite channel would drop your cable operator.
I couldn't be more certain that if that happened you'd be grousing about how your operator fucked you over.
-Peter
DirectTV uses open boxes. Echostar uses proprietary boxes. DirectTV is basically dead in the water when it comes to any sort of interactive service. (As far as I know, they can't even do push-VOD.) I'm pretty sure that Echostar is the world leader in interactive STB deployments. I think that this does give the customer some value.
Yup. That's how I make my living.
Allowed by whom? I hate that cable is a series of local monopolies, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. Right or wrong, the operators feel they need this control, largely due to pressure from the programmers.
It's helpful to remember that, in the scheme of things, TV viewers are the product and advertisers are the customer.
Interesting. The telephone network you seem to be talking about is still analog at the terminal equipment. For practical purposes TV has made the switch to digital, but telephony has only gotten there through various end-runs (VoIP and cell) around this network you hold up as an example.
For all its warts, the cable industry is trying to deliver more to the customer. What have the phone carriers done for us lately? Caller ID is the latest "big feature" those dinosaurs have given us.
Terminal equipment on the phone network is infinitely simpler than contemporary TV. If the Satellite and Cable operators were forced to only use open boxes they'd only be able to offer the services available on a large portion of those boxes.
That very well could be a better thing in the long run, but in the short run it would mean fewer features for the customer.
That's cool that you find your TV so satisfying. Does is support push-VOD? Or Switched Digital? Or some other feature that someone just dreamed up yesterday and will be pushed out to operator-owned STBs in a year?
Your comment reveals a deep misunderstanding about what's going on. Is it your position that your operator should support any and all features your particular TV manufacturer chooses to implement in your particular TV model? (Which implies that the manufacturer has a better idea of how to get the most value out of the network than the operator does!) What about what my TV manufacturer thinks?!
And when some subtlety in your particular TV's implementation of some feature doesn't work with the operator's, who fixes it? Why should the operator change it if it works for every other TV on the network? Why should the manufacturer care if it works on other networks?
That's an easy one! It costs them to control who has access to a feature, but costs them nothing extra to roll it out to everyone. These features are dependent on software in the STB.
You don't seem to realize that these features are either custom software on the STB, or network features that are accessed by . . . custom software on the STB. If that doesn't clarify why they want to control the STB for you, I don't think anything will!
-Peter