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Re:Software Engineering Within SpaceX by jjeaff on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @02:17PM (#23406739)
And you can't put customized ads on a physical switchboard.
Re:Software Engineering Within SpaceX by GuB-42 on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @02:33PM (#23406984)
Of course you can. If it has any form of display, it can display customized ads. Some radio stations manage to put ads on the 14-segment display that is supposed to show the station name and/or frequency.

And if it doesn't, there is always room for a sticker. Buy a new laptop and you are going to see half a dozen ads before you even turn it on: on the box, on leaflets inside the box, and in the form of stickers,... It seems that only Apple doesn't play that game, but the privilege is expensive.

Re:Software Engineering Within SpaceX by avmich on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @06:40PM (#23409798)
> Some radio stations manage to put ads on the 14-segment display that is supposed to show the station name and/or frequency.

We can talk about hardware protection against ads. The hardware would need to recognize allowed data - like station name and frequency - and reject disallowed, like attempts to make a running text. This will limit functionality; maybe it's worth it.

We can talk about software protection - when user controls some layer of software. We can implement it as a type system, with the same result (only now we can modify the software layer if we need). Type system which makes ads non-representable looks like a nice solution.

Guilty myself in writing a game resembling Tetris on a 8-segment display (blocks moving horizontally), so yes, people can be inventive...