Patent Office Rejects Verizon's TV Snooping Tech Application

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TeraMedia

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Obama: Mr. Page, as Technology Advisor to the President, I would like to ask what the Government of the United States should be doing differently to help businesses succeed.
Larry: Mr. President, with all due respect, WHAT THE F@!#$% is going on with the USPTO? I can't wipe my a$$ without getting sued for patent infringement! It's hurting everyone but the lawyers. Something has to change.

Fast forward 3 months to an article by Kevin Parrish...

On a different note, I am so fed up with the cable co's it's mind-stopping. First, they require STBs to decode expanded basic, and the FCC shuts them down on that front. Then, they develop and require cable cards, but deliberately make them not work well. THEN, they change the technology so that a cable card alone is not enough; you need a tuning adapter that sends back requests to the cable co to run on or off a specific channel. In the mean-time, they send out single-copy-only signals with programs that should be freely-copyable, preventing sharing of recorded TV within a home, but at the same time offer "whole house DVR" because their own DVRs ignore the copy-once signal. They force 3rd parties to go through extremely expensive and time-consuming procedures to get OCUR certification, but their own devices would likely fail such tests.

/rant

The only way this could end well is if the FCC or FTC steps in and separates the connection provider from the content provider. Take away the monopoly that the Cable Co has on the coax going to your wall, and all-of-a-sudden the rules change.
 

bigdragon

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[citation][nom]HEXiT[/nom]why would you even allow this kind of crap in your home...any 1 that does is an idiot of the highest order im not saying you are said idiot but people in general...[/citation]
I would allow it in exchange for a 50% reduction in my monthly bill. TV service is already astronomical in price. Cutting that down would be welcome. However, as I pointed out, if its too much of a burden I would not allow it into my home. That's just my opinion.
 

TeraMedia

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Somewhere, there is a creepy, geeky, socially-inept engineer at Verizon who is thinking, "With this STB camera, we'll be able to watch all of the babes we want! It will be awesome! I bet we may even be able to see some of them naked, or doing stuff like in American Pie!"

Remember when those Geek-Squad guys were busted for remotely-controlling customers' laptop webcams? Or when that school district in PA got their butts handed to them for taking pics of students at home using - or not using - school-issued computers? Multiply that by like 5 million, and that's one of the side-effects that Verizon might be making possible through the technology described in this patent. I know it says infrared, but some CCDs support both infrared and visible light, which means that a simple software change leads to remote viewing capabilities of, well, Jim Levenstein and Nadia.

So to that creepy, geeky, socially-inept engineer I say: You wanna see an "american pie"? Go find your own. The one I brought home is for me alone.
 
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