Re: Unbox

1

I admit that BoingBoing is a bit of teh lame, but omg, ogged, you're totally fuXX0red. Now that Amazon has complete control of your computer, what shall they do with it?

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2

From the link: I once attended a DRM negotiation where an MPAA vice-president said, "Watching a show that's being received in one room while you're sitting in another room has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it."

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3

55 -- did you understand what he meant by that? Because I did not.

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4

Well, it's BoingBoing's fault for reading the damn thing. See how happy I am? That's because I didn't read it. I watched my movies, and someone else can fight the good fight. (I did, however, disable the Unbox service, so it doesn't run unless I manually start it, which I only do for the few minutes that I need to download a movie.)

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5

56: I think what he meant was that if you can receive a transmission in one room, but view the transmission in another (I don't know if he meant because you're standing in the other room or because you've got another monitor or computer there), he should be able to charge you.

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6

57: how do you know it's not running?

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7

58 -- You mean like cable TV? That is "received into" "one room" of your house (the one where the cable enters the wall) but you might watch it in a different room (the one where your television is, with suatable extensions made to the cable). I don't see where the value is being added.

59 -- If you open your Services application in your control panel you can check the status of installed services and turn them on and off. Assuming -gg-d is using a Windows platform.

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8

Righto, clown man.

And, if you're really paranoid, you can run a handy dandy utility like Process Explorer to see precisely what's running.

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9

I don't see where the value is being added.

You'd rather have to watch the teevee in the room where the cable enters the house? Total addition of value!

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10

I sympathize with you, ogged, and maybe you're right (process explorer shows no unbox processes == no unbox processes running), but at this point, I think back to the thing a couple years ago when Sony's music CDs installed what were essentially rootkits when you played them, and I start to think that maybe a bit more paranoia is warranted here. Know what I'm saying? It's within-the-realm-of-possible that simply checking that process monitor isn't enough -- at any rate, BB has given me enough heebie-jeebies that I'll never be using that thing on any machine that I own.

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