This is so they can sell your browser history while telling you they're not selling your browser history. It also makes it legal to sell you out after the government revokes the right to sell that crap in 4-8 years.

The unwashed masses wish to speak with each other in a public format. 80% of the unwashed masses are already on Facebook, so it's quite difficult for other social, semi-open services to get a foothold.

I feel exactly the same way. But corporations make the laws, we can't get around that. Format shifting can be moral and hell, if it doesn't make money, we're going to get screwed in the process.

Silicon dust makes some stand alone multi-tuner boxes that can save to a Windows share and work pretty well.

I'm using one with a Plex server.

The act of circumventing the DRM is illegal. That's why the "rip" otherwise they'd just call it copying your content to a device.

Most people are ready to accept that ripping is illegal but you're not going to get busted for ripping, you get busted for sharing.

I use Plex, but it's just about the same thing.

I have several hundreds of dvds including most of the useful Disney collection a ton of recorded TV and I have kids.

Instead of $40 a month in cable box rental, I rent a single $5 cable card and pay for a modest cable package. I also own a silicon dust tuner and couple of Roku devices.

Because all my content is on my own devices, I don't worry about shows being dropped or inaccessible. I don't worry about the shows leaving Netflix. I get to pick my stream speeds. If I need a 128kb Thomas the Tank Engine stream on an overburdened wifi at an airport with 6-hour delays to settle down 30 rowdy children, that's my superpower.

I funnel Youtube through a channel, my kid can watch approved content without being able to follow links to other less reputable content.

When we vacation and wind down at hotels, go on car trips, All my movies and tv show recordings are at my disposal.

Sure, I can add stuff I don't own, or share my content with others, but I don't really need to, I think cord shaving is a good place to be and if things get bad with net neutrality, I have some personal defense.
 

Wonder what the average age distribution is on slashdot...

They already could be doing this without glass, The business is already doing this. Security footage makes it to the net every time something interesting happens.

You don't assume the business or the guy tapping away on his phone at the next table is recording you because he's not. There are far less glassholes than assholes who hate people for wearing glass.

It's back to the future, future year, WTH isn't every communication secure? It's not a problem with overhead anymore.

relevant XKCD http://xkcd.com/1357/

Right to free speech doesn't mean you can go around saying what you want without repercussions. It means the government can't stop you or hold it against you. Corporations can mostly do what they want minus some fairly flexible laws around eavesdropping and discrimination and a few other choice things.

Constitutional rights don't translate in to private corporation -> employee/customer rights
http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

"What most Americans generally don't know is that the Constitution doesn't apply to private corporations at all."

I forget about /. for a few years, come back and it just feels like home.... :)

They're still WAY better than lifehacker.

that and unlimited data has become a 4 letter word.

it's honestly a little worse, at least termination fees are slightly lower than the cost of a new handset.

They're simply doing this wrong. There is an easy, beneficial solution.

If you want to stop "contracts", offer to finance the phone and put them on pay as you go.

They leave, they stop paying the pay as you go but still pay monthly+interest for the phone.

It is what it says, no one gets screwed.

I HATE cellphone subsidy, there's no reason to wrap the equipment in with the service, especially on GSM.

People HATE changes, until they've been around long enough not to be "change" anymore. It's simply not time for metro yet, that will come much later. That said, I think it's impossible to site windows 8 as "the" smoking gun. It's the #1 thing people are going to complain about because it's just that different.

What's killing pcs? For the general public, tablet saturation, large phones, slowing pace of software complexity. You can run office from a web browser now. You can do 90% of what you want conveniently from a tablet without burning your lap. your 3 year old hard drives don't fail like they did back in the days, Consoles are still in full force. Where is the pc's place? The number of things you need a pc for, (specifically a new pc) is shrinking quickly every day. Sure /.ers sue pc's and can use all the power they can wrap their hands around, but grandma is just as well off reading emails on her ipad mini, kids are living off their cell phones, the market is shrinking as portable solutions get faster and portable software catches up.

My freaking phone has a 5.5 inch display, 2GB of ram, 80GB of storage and a quad core 1.6GHz processor. What I do for a living requires a pc and I prefer 27" lcd's to my 5.5, but it's not like I break out my laptop on vacation anymore ya know?

I think you're going to see the market move over slowly to keyboarded tablets as people don't need more horsepower, use more cloud storage and want light weight and long battery life.