UrlBlogGrey

Natalie & I recently transferred our cable television service to our new home, which gave Comcast license to force upon us an HD cable-box upgrade. I was excited to learn that the cable-box is the well regarded Motorola 6200. The 6200 includes two IEEE 1394 (Firewire) outputs on the back panel which should provide a raw audio/video feed in native HD resolution when possible.

But I excitement quickly changed to disappointment upon learning that Comcast has applied 5C content protection to their HD channels, which means that unauthorized devices (such as our MythTV) are not authorized to record or view the content via the Firewire port. This means that our HD-capable cable-box is effectively no different from a cheaper standard-definition cable-box. I've chosen to record HD content from a broadcast antenna, which generally offers better video quality at no cost. But it's frustrating that Comcast and other cable providers offer HD with the caveat that it can only be viewed with select devices. It's a total bait-and-switch.

Posted by Scott at 1:17 PM | Permalink

I've been working on a side-project that involves tracking in great detail many of the minor activities that we engage in day-to-day. I've created a specialized networked device to record and display information related to these activities. Information about the activities is stored in a relational database on a remote server. The idea is that the information can be collected for weeks or months, and then trends can be identified so that lifestyle changes can be made with good results.

Monitoring and tracking our activities is becoming incredibly popular. WIRED Magazine recently had an issue with the title 'Living by Numbers' in which they described many popular applications and products that enable people to quantify the details of their life. There are huge benefits to knowing more about how we live, but systems that are involved must be designed with privacy in mind.

But with more data comes more problems. What if the details of your body temperature, diet, or geographic movements find their way into the hands of a prospective employer, insurance agent, or any individual or entity who may not have your best interests at heart? Securing that data is paramount. And I think the easiest way to secure that data is to own it in its entirety. Cloud Computing (GMail, Google Documents, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc) may make it easy to access, share, and compare your data, but it provides control and ownership of that data to an external entity whose security measures are a complete unknown.

So, I think that it's very important that data related your day-to-day activities be kept as close to you, the rightful owner, as possible. As we design and develop tools to capture and record this data, we must provide additional tools that allow the owners to access and transfer their data as they see fit.

Posted by Scott at 5:15 PM | Permalink