171–180 of 321 posts
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Tax on gasoline like that would only affect the poorest of citizens. Charge it on shares of gasoline producing companies and car companies so their share holders scream at them to move to less carbon-y energy creation mechanisms.
The poorest citizens don't own cars.
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In our country we have a law that states a product has to live up to it's reasonably expected life time. So while a manufacturer might give it a warranty and the retailer might give it some special warranty, ultimately, the retailer (which in some cases is the manufacturer if you buy directly) is responsible no matter what. That doesn't go for consumables or software, or if you break it yourself obviously, but a phon…
What country? This sounds like a great way to poison a court system with bullshit lawsuits.
A long time ago I read a Science Fiction short story about a society where everything was unrepairable, throwaway and came with expiry dates. Does not seem too much like Science Fiction nowadays... EDIT: I wonder if anyone might remember the name of the story: The basic plot is a business man living in a throwaway society manages to convince a dying man to sell him his personally developed car. A car that has been bu…
That seems like somewhat of a weak ending, because there's no reason digital clocks and plastic gear levers can't also last for decades. Also I'll link a sort of inverse to that tale: http://www.eldritchpress.org/owh/shay.html#line01
I hardly think I gave the story justice, since it is based on my memory from something like 20 years ago or more and I am sure I am misremembering the specifics.
But to address the points that were raised:
It is a convertible and plastic does not do well in the sun. Then next year the company decides that they can save 50% on manufacturing cost by using a cheaper and thinner plastic, which would only last 10 years, rather than the decades of the alloy it replaced originally, but that is more than enough time for any car. Then soon after that the company decides that 10 years is still too long and they can save even more by.....
First a digital clock, then a digital clock that gets wifi updates, then a digital clock that tracks and transmits your locations, then a digital clock that won't work unless the company sends a heartbeat code, then...you get the idea...it is a slippery slope.
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I always thought that a regulation along the lines of "if you sell it, you must give the customer the ability to dispose of it" would be nice. And, yes, I do think that means Amazon would have to have some sort of bricks-and-mortar operation: at minimum there must be a shop owned by someone , which Amazon has a deal with, that you'd be able to drop your discarded Amajunk off at. Also, I also think we should have a ca…
Tax on gasoline like that would only affect the poorest of citizens. Charge it on shares of gasoline producing companies and car companies so their share holders scream at them to move to less carbon-y energy creation mechanisms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tax on gasoline like that would only affect the poorest of citizens. Charge it on shares of gasoline producing companies and car companies so their share holders scream at them to move to less carbon-y energy creation mechanisms.
The poorest citizens don't own cars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tax on gasoline like that would only affect the poorest of citizens. Charge it on shares of gasoline producing companies and car companies so their share holders scream at them to move to less carbon-y energy creation mechanisms.
The poorest citizens don't own cars.
They live outside the cities where housing is more affordable but there's no public transport
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're more dependent on corporations when we buy things, since we have given them all the money upfront. A service model gives us more leverage. As someone who had to throw away a washing machine because the company wouldn't service it, I would have very much preferred a rental model where the loss would have been theirs. To flip your question: Are you okay not being able to buy a washing machine because you couldn't…
The entire point of the article is that you (or a local technician) should be allowed and able to repair your washing machine and not rely on the company exclusively to fix it. Having to throw it away is exactly because you don't really own it without the right to repair. You "own" a machine that it is impossible and illegal to fix or modify, which is not ownership at all, which means you already are renting it as a…
The point of my comment above, and amelius's if I understand correctly, is that a service model eliminates this risk from the buyer. I'll be able to get another washing machine without incurring a financial loss.
What matters at the end of the day is having a working, safe, reliable washing machine. Having a right to repair is only a means to this end, and not an end to itself. A service model is another means to this end. Don't confuse the means for the ends and entertain only one means.
I will admit that I am not a fan of the "right to repair" movement in terms of what I've seen from it so far when it comes to actual legislative proposals, and I also find a lot of the way it talks down to current consumers and market forces distasteful and short sighted. I can absolutely see how in some areas of production narrowly tailored rules might be beneficial in terms of efforts manufacturers make to prevent…
As far as I can imagine, the only theoretical user benefit comes from being able to protect the device even with user cooperation, assuming he's being forced or a danger to the product. However if it's possible to circumvent the security mechanism anyway through a security bug in the implementation, this becomes a moot point. The consistent availability of jail breaks for iOS shows that the system is inherently insecure and considering the vast attack surface that's not a surprise either. There is no guarantee against the stack having been compromised.
The real leverage from the locked hardware is very much on Apple's side - they force the user into their ecosystem after purchasing the device to apply arbitrary restrictions and extract additional revenue from purchasing applications or media.
Regarding Touch ID, the sensor input (fingerprint) has been shown to be forgeable without professional tools shortly after each revision was released. The technology is insecure out of the box and my original point applies here too. You'd have to argue why the user shouldn't be able to trust the new sensor after authenticating with the primary method (pass code) and how that substantially improves device security.
Liability is btw. hardly a concern, the EU has had implied warranty that doesn't get voided by 3rd party repairs for a long time. Damage from repairs isn't really any different from just dropping the device and thus can be handled equally.
Point (2) is not well justified either. For once every battery has a connector as it's fragile and dangerous - including Apple's. You can't run it through the reflow oven with the main board and you generally don't want to add it to the assembly at the same time. The argument about repeated connector uses is absurd, we're talking about very few replacements in the product lifetime. There are plenty of cheap low footprint options that are specified for at least several uses and almost(?) every battery uses one of them.
There have been high end phone that supported toolless battery swapping in the past without showing huge tradeoffs for it. Going beyond toolless many phones can be fixed without being destroyed in the process - no tradeoff whatsoever. Not using excess amounts of irreversible glue or substituting some with screws goes a long way. It can be assumed that the actual reasoning is more along the lines of not caring to save some marginal cost or deliberately preventing repairs.
Using less glue or a slightly different design is no dead matter, other means are hardly comparable to manufacturing the high tech components. For recycling it is fundamentally important to be able to separate the components easily and any extended lifespan is vastly more beneficial than recycling to start with. The presented argument about any environmental advantage for unfixable designs is exceptionally weak.