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Demon-Haunted World

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Re: Demon-Haunted World

#231

Post by mathattack »

pixl97 wrote: post #230
mathattack wrote: post #227

HP is an egregious cheater, and this kind of cheating is in the DNA of any company that makes its living selling consumables or service at extremely high markups – they do their business at war with their customers. This is a very strong statement. Asking for high margins puts you at war with your customers?

Yes. Normally in a functioning economy competition drives out high margins, unless innovation is occurring. To protect against competition HP uses things like DRM in printer cartridges. Anti-consumer behavior occurs when your ink cartridges stop working because you didn't use them fast enough and are forced to buy a new set.

I was focused on the middle. "this kind of cheating is in the DNA of any company that makes its living selling consumables or service at extremely high markups"

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#232

Post by ajro »

thinkling wrote: post #160
eridius wrote: post #108

> like the iTunes and Kindle ‘‘updates’’ that have removed features the products were sold with Anyone know what iTunes update he's talking about? I don't remember anything that fits this description.

Don't know about iTunes, but much along these lines Sonos removed support for Windows DRM and ticked off customers who had their music stored in that format. Amusingly, the link I found about it is also a post by Cory Doctorow. https://boingboing.net/2011/12/22/sonos-removes-windows-drm-... I suspect the Kindle feature he's talking about is the text-to-speech feature, which the publishers hated because it threatened…

Text-to-speech in kindle was really nice feature in my opinion.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#233

Post by loup-vaillant »

eridius wrote: post #122
middleorigin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel comfortable in blaming Sony for this. At one point I would have paid for an open ps3, say without the gpu, but these are lost sales now.

Sony didn't really have a choice. They have to protect the integrity of their system as best they can, which means closing any holes that are used to circumvent the copyright restrictions. Besides just being important to protect sales on their platform, it wouldn't surprise me if there aren't contractual obligations here as well.

The integrity of the Win-tel platform is not preserved at all, yet games are still being sold there.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#234

Post by kerkeslager »

computator wrote: post #168
jordigh wrote: post #145

There is so much "Stallman was right" in all of these examples... non-free software always manages to eventually sneak in malicious anti-user features, where the user has no recourse. At least with free software there's always the fundamental freedom to fork. You think systemd is a Red Hat plot to destroy Linux, then go use Devuan. You don't trust what Google could be doing with Chrome, take your pick of alternatives…

> Whenever someone refuses to show source code I always think, "what are you hiding in there?" There's usually something. There's a dilemma that developers face when deciding to release source code that's bigger than fear of software theft or the desire to hide something evil in the code. It's a fear of being scrutinized, ridiculed, or humiliated over the quality of their code. Imagine 2 programs that do something us…

This "dilemma" is great. I'd rather find out my code is garbage and be able to learn and fix it than not know and continue writing garbage code.

Fear of that criticism being public is just an ego thing. If you write something people use you will be criticized, if not for the code then for so everything else. Closed- source doesn't help with that.

Some say the only way out is to kill your ego, but that's pretty difficult to do. I think a smaller step that's easier is to simply stop attaching your self-worth to your code. You wouldn't hate a learning programmer because they're bad at coding. Extend that same feeling to yourself--unless you think you know everything, you're still learning. People might not like what you make, but that's an opportunity to figure out why, so you can do things differently next time.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#235

Post by loup-vaillant »

eridius wrote: post #108

> like the iTunes and Kindle ‘‘updates’’ that have removed features the products were sold with Anyone know what iTunes update he's talking about? I don't remember anything that fits this description.

May have been the one that "helpfully" deleted your music, and replaced it by compressed version, even if you didn't bought it via iTunes. Or deleted your files period, if it detected a not so "equivalent" version you could download.

Supposedly to save local disk space.

I recall an accounting of a composer losing his work file that way —they got compressed behind his back. Thank goodness he had a backup.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#236

Post by Dove »

I wonder if we can require software to be open source for the same reason that food has to list its nutritional information and ingredients. Information asymmetry makes a deal unfair.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#237

Post by qplex »

hutzlibu wrote: post #209
Nomentatus wrote: post #147

This isn't a new demon-haunted world, this is the old, demon-haunted world before nineteenth-century progressive politics, back when "milk" that wasn't half chalk still might have a fish in it (see famous Thoreau quote on evidence.) We aren't enforcing the laws we have and our grandfathers and mothers had. (Three guesses why.) Not on monopolies, contracts, patent misuse... nothing. Just this week I and Hearthstone ca…

"on the beat, and Trump vowing to fire more regulators, that's what's changed. " I don't really like to defend trumps sayings, but in this case I don't think there are government regulators needed. The company acted shitty and you took the consequences and quit and avoid this company. That's how market works. No need for regulation here. The "only" problem with this in general today is, that most people do not unders…

Regulation obviously does not work if you have a corrupted and dysfunctional goverment (and law).

In any case, you can not expect individual people to just "take the consequences" of bad actors and move on.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#238

Post by [deleted] »

captaincrowbar wrote: post #14

Doctorow mentions the cases where a printer company has made their software lie about how much ink was left in a cartridge to make consumers replace them more often. I always wondered why a manufacturer would want to do that. I mean, I understand the motive of making consumers buy ink more often, but from the manufacturer's point of view, why would they want to throw perfectly good ink away? Colour ink isn't as expen…

[deleted]

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#239

Post by dwringer »

jellicle wrote: post #106
extrapickles wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are using the receipt prompt to hide how long credit card authentication is taking. They can't easily cheat on prices as usually there are large signs displaying the current price. They can't easily be cheating on amount dispensed, as the pumps are regularly checked by the local Weights and Measures Department (doesn't rule out a VW like cheat though).

Yeah. Inspectors use a 5-gallon container to test gas pumps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9HG_3SIsEM So, your gas pump has to be accurate for the first five gallons, but then you can cheat as much as you want. The only saving grace is that the people who make the pumps and software wouldn't be the main benefiters from cheating at the pump. So probably we're actually okay for gas pumps. It's situations where the s…

As much as I am confident many pump operators out there would do anything to make a quick buck at the customer's expense, all it takes is one time metering more gas into your tank than what your tank is able to hold, after which you know they're lying and regulators will get involved. Even if not, word of that kind of thing spreads and it won't be long before that filling station's competition starts stealing its business through word-of-mouth.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#240

Post by supernumerary »

layble wrote: post #93
captaincrowbar wrote: post #14

Doctorow mentions the cases where a printer company has made their software lie about how much ink was left in a cartridge to make consumers replace them more often. I always wondered why a manufacturer would want to do that. I mean, I understand the motive of making consumers buy ink more often, but from the manufacturer's point of view, why would they want to throw perfectly good ink away? Colour ink isn't as expen…

I know of a large printer company who approached a large media company with a deal that would have had the large media company change the color of the text on their printer friendly pages to something near black but requiring the color cartridge instead of true black. As I recall they were willing to pay seven figures annually. The media company did not take them up on their offer. The underhandedness/cleverness of t…

To say nothing of surreptitious tracking dots on all printed materials.
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