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I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

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Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#181

Post by tomrod »

ryandrake wrote: post #160
samfriedman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your car is fully self-driving, I'm sure you will be able to get a discount on the sticker/rental price by agreeing to view some ads on the in-car screens while you ride.

Sure, it will start that way. But we all know how that feature will progress: 1. ads play by default, with an option to pay to remove then to: 2. forced ads with no option to remove, and the car won't run unless they're playing

I have never, ever purchased anything with online ads.

Have you?

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#182

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

ryandrake wrote: post #156
yousir wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it could be fixed if the market demanded it. The market (my mom for example) is unaware there is a fix. > there is no pressure from anyone to maintain backward compatibility. You and your manager are both part of the problem. And the phone makers, because they invented a market place for shit companies that wants to ship unfinished software and push daily updates to their users to eventually reach a point where…

This is a good point too. There are people unaware of the better way! The world is coming, where one day there won't be anyone left alive who remembers things like: 1. Software that would work, un-modified, for decades. 2. Software that worked without access to some back-end. 3. Software that didn't require permission from a third party to run. 4. Software that didn't collect personal data from users. 5. Having root/…

There is no money in selling software apart from a service these days. Part of it is due to the open source movement and expectation that the software is free while you pay for support/services. Software as an entity that you buy apart from a service has been devalued.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#183

Post by wtallis »

jacquesm wrote: post #173
ryandrake wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. People are forgetting the word "command". In the old days, users would command computers to do things, and the computers did those things. If I say rm -rf documents, I expect the documents directory to be removed. I'm not suggesting that the computer could do it, or asking the computer to do it. I'm issuing a command . And I expect it to be carried out completely. Delete it all. I don't expect the OS to keep…

Interesting. I have a blog post in draft called 'Do as I say', it echoes quite a few of the sentiments in your comment.

Don't forget to mention that the term "user agent" for HTTP clients like web browsers used to be taken literally. Now, the expectation usually is that the browser acts in the best interests of the server, not the user.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#184

Post by dredmorbius »

therealmarv wrote: post #109
CodeMage wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole car metaphor is a bit unfortunate. Most people who want to drive securely from A to B would be pretty freaked out by a bunch of strangers quietly upgrading their car's brakes in the middle of the night. And they would definitely be pissed off if their car suddenly refused to accelerate beyond 25 mph on a clear, straight, empty stretch of dry road in broad daylight just because the speed limit happens to be…

This argument can be also made positive. Imagine a new update (to be on your example, the new brakes) made the car safer and the saved your life because an accident could be avoided entirely. Otherwise you would be dead. It's not only negative... Btw. when thinking of Tesla cars.. they auto update their software remotely ;)

Strawman. "Imagine that the actual horrible experience you actually witnessed was instead wonderful."

Except that it wasn't, isn't, and by all evidence won't be.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#185

Post by gameshot911 »

ryandrake wrote: post #60
radarsat1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. But.. > "Tinder has been updated. Deal with it". is an interesting choice of example. The anger at updates only really makes sense for apps that are entirely local to your hardware. As soon as you have an app where part of it runs on a server that you don't control, that logic goes out the window. They can stop your non-updated app from working with no effort, just by making the server API incompati…

The anger is still valid because at the end of the day, the software (that used to work) no longer works due to a choice made by the company that makes the software. To the end user there is no difference between "making a breaking API change on the server" and "pushing a native update that disables the app". This may be the current sucky reality of SaaS, but it could be fixed if the market demanded it.

It seems to me that the company that makes the software had the perfect right to decide when it does and does not work. No?

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#186

Post by nullgraph »

snark42 wrote: post #39
adreamingsoul wrote: post #5

So, back to land lines with analog phones? Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user? For a period, I was excited about the Ubuntu phone because of the fact that I could have full control over it. Sad to see that project terminated. I'm also interested in "dumbphones" that can use CDMA or GSM networks.

> Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user? Many (HTC, Google, ASUS, etc. - NOT Samsung) unlocked android phone can be loaded with a variety of bootloaders and then flashed with the ROM of your choice where you have full root access. Of course without google apps (Google Play Store) your phone isn't all that useful, but you can install google apps ( maybe from a questionable legal/copyri…

As a user of a recently unlocked Android phone, I just found out that the Netflix app don't even appear on the Google Play store for me anymore.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#187

Post by dageshi »

jimmies wrote: post #139
DiNovi wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how I feel about this; you had the power to not auto update; you exercised it; the company had the power to not allow out of date apps use the service; they exercised it... seems right to me. You put yourself in that situation.

Replace "car-hailing app" with "phone that makes calls", "desktop operating system", "game", "TV that decodes images from airwaves", "car", "firmware to read expiration dates in juicero machine", "running shoes", "watch", "water kettle", "firmware that predicts upcoming heart attacks in pacemaker", "app that displays a map". When do you think it starts becoming ridiculous to demand the rights to not update to the use…

When the primary purpose of the device/application/product requires a connection to the internet in order to fulfill its primary purpose.

If it can't do its job at all without an internet connection then denying functionality if you don't update is entirely reasonable in my book. If it can do its primary job without an internet connection then no it's not.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#188

Post by PricelessValue »

That's exactly how I feel about software ever since I got acquainted with windows 10. Do you best to remove all the junk. Then they keep reinstalling their "malware" until they finally remove the option of disabling or removing their malware.

It feels like we are losing more control and access over tech - both software and hardware. Some companies are trying their best to turn tech into a black box which we aren't allowed to peer into.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#189

Post by leereeves »

gameshot911 wrote: post #185
ryandrake wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anger is still valid because at the end of the day, the software (that used to work) no longer works due to a choice made by the company that makes the software. To the end user there is no difference between "making a breaking API change on the server" and "pushing a native update that disables the app". This may be the current sucky reality of SaaS, but it could be fixed if the market demanded it.

It seems to me that the company that makes the software had the perfect right to decide when it does and does not work. No?

There's a sense of loss in that for many of us who were born into a world where, once you bought something, you owned it.

Now, you often buy only a license to use something until the company that made it decides not to let you use it anymore.

In some sense, we live at the mercy of people we've never met.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#190

Post by jpindar »

maxxxxx wrote: post #15
Blinks- wrote: post #4

Increases in complexity up the barrier of entry to any advanced system, but lately it seems like things are made with the intent to make that barrier impossible to overcome within the lifetime of the hardware. The right to repair and open hardware standards are something we need to organize and push for if we want to see improvements. After all it's been demonstrated time and time again that we can't trust black box…

I think we are going more and more into the direction of renting almost everything. If you use ebooks like Kindle you don't accumulate a book collection. Same for record collections. Devices become useless once the connected cloud service shuts down. Eventually we'll probably have cars that get obsoleted quickly. I bet the same will happen for household and other robots once they get more powerful. You will have to p…

I read ebooks on my Kindle and I have quite a book collection. It's easy to download them and strip the DRM.
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