John Peacock’s Comments

• Nov 26th, 2018 @ 7:27am

  Re:

  on Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

  Yes, modern CPAP machines have always-on cellular access. Slightly older models had a SD card that had to be hand carried to the doctor for analysis. Even older models had nothing other than a counter for hours used (and the entire unit had to be brought in).

  I doubt that the type of summary data provided to the insurance company or suppliers (e.g. number of hours used per night), falls under HIPAA regulations. Those are strictly concerned with protecting the details of your medical information. Your doctor can't talk about those without explicit permission, hence the scary forms you have to fill out to let your wife know.

• Nov 1st, 2018 @ 1:49pm

  This isn't your Father's AT&T

  on All The Mergers In The World Apparently Can't Save AT&T From Cord Cutting
  Remember that "AT&T" is actually not a real company any more; it is merely a name that SBC, nee Southwest Bell, bought to try and whitewash their execrable customer service by pretending to be someone else. Everything they do turns to shit...
• May 24th, 2017 @ 6:28am

  Good for the goose, good for the gander

  on The FCC Doesn't Care That Somebody's Spamming Its Net Neutrality Proceeding With Fraudulent Comments

  I wonder what there response would be to a bot-driven comment torrent that opposed rolling back net neutrality? I suspect they would immediately say that those comments have to be ignored...

• Jan 28th, 2015 @ 7:27am

  How cable TV started

  on Hey, Just A Silly Thought: Maybe It's Time We Stop Letting Comcast And AT&T Write State Telecom Law?
  One thing that never comes up in these discussions is that the origin of cable television back in 1948 was CATV - Community Access TV. It came about because isolated communities couldn't receive over the air television signals due to geographic limitations, e.g. being in a valley on the other side from the "major" network antennas. The community banded together and built an antenna that could receive the signal then transmitted it via a cable to the citizens who paid for it.
  
  I'm willing to let Comcast, et al, continue to have a monopoly in an area as long as they are willing to pay back the billions of dollars of access rights they were granted to run their cables along the right of way...
• Oct 31st, 2014 @ 11:22am

  (untitled comment)

  on FBI Holds Secret Meeting To Scare Congress Into Backdooring Phone Encryption
  Obviously the bill will be called FBI Encryption Access Required