Wow...just wow! You must be a high-level executive at a cable company to even think your comment holds any water whatsoever.
Boxee doesn't want TV providers to encrypt signals for channels that you should be able to get without a special decoder. This has nothing to do with technological advancements.
Just as TVs were designed to operate on different "channels," so the next generation IPTV protocol should be interoperable with a host of devices. If I want to design and sell an IPTV receiver, then I should be able to plug it into any IPTV service and begin watching immediately. If TV providers want to encrypt non-broadcast channels, that's fine. But they also should be required to provide an extremely low cost decryption key that I can plug into any device of my choosing. In fact, that key should be provided free of charge. I'm already paying for the cable service. I shouldn't have to pay twice for the privilege of bringing my own receiving device.
What's coming out of hotmail really has nothing to do with it's security as a whole. Anyone can sign up for a free account, hook it into a bot, and start spamming away. That still doesn't equal a lack of security.
Another potential source for spam from hotmail (as I assume you're referring to that as "insecurity") is people's accounts getting hacked. That's usually their own fault for not using secure passwords.
And finally, since hotmail is one of the oldest and most popular services out there, spammers have been spoofing fake hotmail addresses for years. In fact, you can pretend to send email from anyone you like just by setting up your own mailserver! Doing that just usually means you get easily caught by the spam filters.
So....hotmail in and of itself is probably pretty secure. These days, Microsoft really seems to know what they're doing when it comes to locking things down...
I haven't done a lot of research into this recently, but I did follow the topic during the FCC sale of the C-block bandwidth to Verizon.
My understanding of the rules is that they have to allow any device to access their network as long as it goes through a technical review/certification and doesn't damage the network.
What is less clear is whether or not Verizon could charge whatever they please for any given network access. So if you buy a VZW LTE-enabled digital camera, they would have to allow it to access the network, but could charge you some dollar amount for doing so. The same for any other device on your plan.
I agree that it's fair to charge a per-device access fee *if the device connects directly to the network*! However, attaching a secondary device to your phone, hotspot, tablet, or whatever should be covered under the price (extortion) you already pay for that device. Just like you do with your landline ISP.
Can you imagine the outrage if landline ISPs started charging per-device?? I don't understand why there isn't similar outrage occurring over *increasing* mobile network charges! The price of bandwidth isn't going up anywhere near that degree...
So, all that to say...I think the mobile industry needs to get in big trouble.
One thing that nobody seems to be taking into account is that one day, we'll most likely be running all of our applications from the cloud. With the current trend of increasing ability in a web browser, it will be less than ten years before we're able to run things like Photoshop, Autocad, Premiere, and so on directly from the cloud. Nobody has to worry about upgrades, app launches, lost work, etc. It just all sits on a server somewhere and probably runs intensive operations on your local hardware (GPU/CPU), but not much more than that. It's a great model, and that's what Chrome OS is built for! The *next* generation of computing.
Android, on the other hand, is built for the current generation computing model--that is running native, platform-dependent apps. Presently this isn't too bad a model since nobody has yet to come up with a good way to make cloud apps feel like they're native apps. That's a key consideration.
What Google doesn't want is to bet everything on a model that we can already see being outdated and outclassed by next gen web apps. Hence, they're already preparing for the day when generally native apps are taboo and web apps do literally almost everything you could possibly want. From a technical standpoint, this is hugely awesome! From a political standpoint though, there will definitely be privacy concerns and some pricing model issues. We'll just have to wait and see what happens there.
So, yes--Android and Chrome OS *are* on a conflicting path. One holding fast to the "old" model of computing, and one to the "new." I believe that when it becomes necessary, Google will probably create some sort of hybrid of the two to handle edge cases and to bring features of one to the other. They've alluded to this somewhat in the past, although they probably don't quite have the perfect vision of what needs to happen either.
As far as what that hybrid will look like--it's anyone's guess. So, yes--they're absolutely on a collision course, but no, that's not a bad thing. When they do finally collide, I believe we'll see a fusion of the two rather than a really bad accident.
First off, I love reading your articles. TechDirt is awesome!
Just wanted to offer a small correction to your article... Google TV has never been based on or focused on Chrome, really. It's always been built atop Android. Even at IO 2010, they announced that Android apps would eventually run on the platform, but that functionality would come later.
Now, Google TV is being upgraded from a 2.x channel to the 3.x channel. Clearly the needed APIs weren't part of 2.x.
Someone should make a law prohibiting companies like this from making those dishonest edits. Then we can sue them for millions of dollars when they do and get back for all that DRM they've shoved down our throats. Fair use, my shoe!
Yes, encrypted file sharing is nice, but the issue here is proprietary technologies. If encrypted streams are to be successfully used, someone must develop a standard for the implementation. I think there are already such things at encrypted Torrents, but they haven't really caught on yet because of all the overhead that has to be transmitted and the diverse BitTorrent clients that are in use.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Matt H..
Re: (as Matt H)
Boxee doesn't want TV providers to encrypt signals for channels that you should be able to get without a special decoder. This has nothing to do with technological advancements.
Just as TVs were designed to operate on different "channels," so the next generation IPTV protocol should be interoperable with a host of devices. If I want to design and sell an IPTV receiver, then I should be able to plug it into any IPTV service and begin watching immediately. If TV providers want to encrypt non-broadcast channels, that's fine. But they also should be required to provide an extremely low cost decryption key that I can plug into any device of my choosing. In fact, that key should be provided free of charge. I'm already paying for the cable service. I shouldn't have to pay twice for the privilege of bringing my own receiving device.
What a ridiculous notion.
Re: Re: Re: Re: *facepalm!* (as Matt H)
Another potential source for spam from hotmail (as I assume you're referring to that as "insecurity") is people's accounts getting hacked. That's usually their own fault for not using secure passwords.
And finally, since hotmail is one of the oldest and most popular services out there, spammers have been spoofing fake hotmail addresses for years. In fact, you can pretend to send email from anyone you like just by setting up your own mailserver! Doing that just usually means you get easily caught by the spam filters.
So....hotmail in and of itself is probably pretty secure. These days, Microsoft really seems to know what they're doing when it comes to locking things down...
Re: Re: not that i agree (as Matt H)
My understanding of the rules is that they have to allow any device to access their network as long as it goes through a technical review/certification and doesn't damage the network.
What is less clear is whether or not Verizon could charge whatever they please for any given network access. So if you buy a VZW LTE-enabled digital camera, they would have to allow it to access the network, but could charge you some dollar amount for doing so. The same for any other device on your plan.
I agree that it's fair to charge a per-device access fee *if the device connects directly to the network*! However, attaching a secondary device to your phone, hotspot, tablet, or whatever should be covered under the price (extortion) you already pay for that device. Just like you do with your landline ISP.
Can you imagine the outrage if landline ISPs started charging per-device?? I don't understand why there isn't similar outrage occurring over *increasing* mobile network charges! The price of bandwidth isn't going up anywhere near that degree...
So, all that to say...I think the mobile industry needs to get in big trouble.
It's about the future!
Android, on the other hand, is built for the current generation computing model--that is running native, platform-dependent apps. Presently this isn't too bad a model since nobody has yet to come up with a good way to make cloud apps feel like they're native apps. That's a key consideration.
What Google doesn't want is to bet everything on a model that we can already see being outdated and outclassed by next gen web apps. Hence, they're already preparing for the day when generally native apps are taboo and web apps do literally almost everything you could possibly want. From a technical standpoint, this is hugely awesome! From a political standpoint though, there will definitely be privacy concerns and some pricing model issues. We'll just have to wait and see what happens there.
So, yes--Android and Chrome OS *are* on a conflicting path. One holding fast to the "old" model of computing, and one to the "new." I believe that when it becomes necessary, Google will probably create some sort of hybrid of the two to handle edge cases and to bring features of one to the other. They've alluded to this somewhat in the past, although they probably don't quite have the perfect vision of what needs to happen either.
As far as what that hybrid will look like--it's anyone's guess. So, yes--they're absolutely on a collision course, but no, that's not a bad thing. When they do finally collide, I believe we'll see a fusion of the two rather than a really bad accident.
Google TV (as Matt H)
Just wanted to offer a small correction to your article... Google TV has never been based on or focused on Chrome, really. It's always been built atop Android. Even at IO 2010, they announced that Android apps would eventually run on the platform, but that functionality would come later.
Now, Google TV is being upgraded from a 2.x channel to the 3.x channel. Clearly the needed APIs weren't part of 2.x.
Sue them to death (as KillDRM)
RE: huh? (as Matt)
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