The Dying DVR Box and Woz Wisdom 207
Lucas123 writes "At SNW in Santa Clara this past week, a diverse group of techies shared insights into their industries, such as the DVR market. TiVo's senior director of IT, Richard Rothschild, for instance, explained how those set-top boxes track everything you watch for advertising and marketing and then combine the information with supermarket membership card data to determine how effective ad campaigns are. Oh, and TiVo's planning to integrate its box with your flatscreen, so no more set-top device. And Steve Wozniak attacked the American education system, saying students should be graded on a single, long-term project rather than a short learning/testing cycle. 'In school, intelligence is a measurement,' he said. 'If you have the same answer as everyone else in math or science, you're intelligent.'"
I'm sorry... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry (Score:3, Funny)
I feel at least partially responsible for this. When I was working for a large cable TV head-end provider, I pitched this exact idea to upper management. Not as a way to track people, but as a way to prove to advertisers that cable advertising was effective.
I was told that the idea was unworkable and stupid, but six months later was put in charge of a project to roll out the 'brilliant idea from one of or top executives'.
So yeah, sorry everyone.
Re:Two Topics at once? (Score:5, Funny)
This is fucking stupid.
Are we discussing the education system or are we discussing set top boxes?
These are two completely different topics and should not be merged like this.
You're right, of course, we should discuss the merits of the discussion, thus adding yet another thread to it.