V chip (was: Going totally OT )

From: John Wilson <wilson_at_dbit.dbit.com>
Date: Fri Feb 11 17:13:27 2000

On Fri, Feb 11, 2000 at 10:25:38PM +0000, Hans Franke wrote:
> Let me get this straight - there is some software to be implemented
> on TVs and VCRs to disable them on a contend related base ?

Right. But remember, we're still the Land of the Free, even though most
European countries give their citizens a lot more freedom. See, any time
the majority (or better yet, a well-funded and vocal minority) wants something
censored, it's not censorship -- the founding fathers were only trying to
protect our rights to say stuff that everyone agrees with, they hate
people with unpopular tastes or opinions.

> Just
> assuming that there will be some kind of add on signal (at this point
> I'd like to get some technical information) suplying the level(s)
> of whatever (what classes are named ?), who is responsible to
> judge the content ?

There, you've hit the biggest problem. My understanding is that it's just
a single scale -- from "not offensive" to "very offensive", according to
someone, somewhere. Since the government likes to see everything in terms
of strict threshholds (55 MPH = no problem, 56+ MPH = OK to lay down tack
strips and cause a fatal crash), they've convinced themselves that everyone
is offended by the same stuff. So some invisible authority gets to decide
what's offensive and what isn't and everything comes prepackaged (no I
don't know what the protocol is for labeling the show but I assume it's some
between-visible-scan-lines thing like closed captioning is), so you're just
supposed to set your TV for whatever age your kids are (they're all the same
age, right?) and leave it at that.

> Also, are the TV stations also forced to supply the coding all the time ?

I think it's supposed to be done per show. Like the current TV rating system,
where they put up a logo at the beginning of each show saying what its rating
is. Ridiculous... If I owned a TV network, I'd just set everything to "most
offensive" and forget about it.

> BTW: I know there is violence on US-TV - but sex ?

There's no *real* sex on US TV, but the bible thumpers are offended by even
the hint of it. They think that nudity is inherently wrong, and I just
*love* the illogic that you can say anything you want but you can't use
certain words to say it. Say the exact same thing another way and you're
OK though.

Anyway this is all just another attempt to idiot-proof the world. Instead of
just sitting down with their kids at a young age and explaining what sex
is and why it should be taken seriously, the lazy absentee parents think
the right thing is for their kids to be prevented at all costs from even
looking down in the bath tub, so that they have no idea what's really going
on, and it all comes as a total shock to them when they turn 18.

People are unbelievably repressed in this country though. I thought my parents
did a pretty good job of explaining everything, but they left some important
stuff out, like the fact that sex is fun! What a mind-bender, hearing about
neighbors etc. that had gotten pregnant "by accident", I couldn't possibly
imagine how people would pull off such a complicated disgusting procedure
without meaning to. Makes a whole lot more sense now!

> If the judgement is
> done by the producer, someone of a 'nude acceping' show may have a
> different feeling about the 'sex rating' then the next guy who airs
> some TV church stuff.

Exactly! Personally, I'm seriously, DEEPLY offended by anything to do with
organized religion, yet as far as the government is concerned that stuff
is all strictly G-rated. So I'll never convince my TV to automatically
skip those shows. I have no problem with nudity though, and if I had kids
I'd want them to see plenty of it too, so that the novelty would wear off
and they wouldn't go into total cranial shutdown the way most Americans do
when they see it (since we're strongly conditioned to think that the only
time anyone shows any skin is when they're about to have sex with you, so
we act like idiots when we see people naked in other contexts). But that's
the *main* thing the government wants to stop us from seeing.

Anyway, I'm not saying the government is trying to gradually eat away at our
rights and subtly turn the USA into a totalitarian state so slowly that no
one even notices. But if they WERE trying to do that, they'd go about it
exactly this way!

Well anyway, I was pissed off the *last* time the gov't forced everyone to
pay for an unneeded feature in their TVs, which was closed captioning, but
now I use it all the time! It's really handy when the actors are mumbling,
or when they're talking in funny voices for no apparent reason (but the
caption explains that they're quoting from a 1930s movie I never saw), or
when my wife falls asleep but I want to keep watching.

Yech, sorry about all this OT stuff, this has gotten pretty far from finding
goodies in dumpsters. I once hauled an IBM 029 keypunch out of a dumpster,
does that make up for it? It was at the company I worked for so there was
no problem with permission, the guys who tossed it in really relished the
experience (I guess they hadn't been big fans of that keypunch back when it
was the company's only input device) so they were telling everyone, I flipped
out of course but the same guys were nice enough to help me haul the thing out
again.

I've also had pretty good luck with the friendly neighborhood engineering
school, especially because they're too cheap to get dumpsters for every
building so a lot of the time stuff sits on loading docks for weeks before
it gets hauled off, so you can just take it away (as long as you're sure
it's scrap). I got a mostly-complete ASR33 and another terminal that way a
couple of years ago, and a few other things (found a VK100 GIGI minus the PSU
sitting by the curb with some other trash, outside RPI's linear accelerator
a few years back). No need to get waist deep in transformer oil or anything
yucky like that...

John Wilson
D Bit
--------------
P.S. guess I spoke too soon about the drought of idiotic winter accidents
being reported on our local TV news as "tragedies", apparently just last night
some bozo in Utica went snowmobiling in the dark and ate a tree at high speed.
Received on Fri Feb 11 2000 - 17:13:27 GMT