191–200 of 249 posts
I hate that Deere is singularly picked on, here. Other vehicle manufacturers have followed in John Deere's footsteps with this, and no one cites those manufacturers' actions; only John Deere. I guess it's because they were first?
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Because Google sells phones too. That nearly everyone in this thread has missed this fact so far is baffling.
Their ad revenue must be several orders of magnitude higher than their phone sales revenue, though.
This all shows what an absolute disaster the DMCA was; how poorly thought out it was, how unconsidered the consequences were, and how badly our legislators failed us... to give Hollywood a little extra cash. We should be outraged. It all started as "hey, these damn kids are stealing our musics". So they made a law with "broad bipartisan support" to punish those evil evil people that were sharing their CDs with other…
The anti-circumvention provisions, to which you're referring, have caused all sorts of problems. But the bill was passed as a whole, and those provisions were part of what was traded off for the copyright safe harbor provisions. You have to look at the whole bill to see the balance that was struck.
All that said, I fully support the right to repair movement.
> John Deere argues that access to the company’s proprietary software could be used to bypass emissions controls or safety measures. On an analog car, I can physically remove emissions control devices. I can short circuit the seat belt warning. I can pull a fuse and disable the (not quite analog) antilock brakes. I can fail to change the tires when they have an unsafe amount of tread. I'm less familiar with farm equi…
So John Deere sells upgrade packages for its equipment. If you need more torque, towing capacity, etc, you pay for the upgrade. It likely pushes you a new tune and raises the boost. They definitely don't want some local tuner shop being able to handle this for you which explains their reasoning ($$). I've seen the price list once recently but I can't recall how I found it and it's evading me right now. The upgrades w…
The OEM can claim (perhaps rightly, more knowledge of the whole system) to be better at it, or simply offer it without voiding warranty.
Here's another way Apple may be killing "right to repair": I own a chain of independent cell phone and computer repair shops. Last year, Google unilaterally took away AdWords in our industry. The day after Thanksgiving, we woke up to find none of our ads were running. Google claimed this was because "third-party tech support providers" were scamming customers--i.e. people were buying AdWords for virus removal and tec…
Give the conspiracy theories a break.
I’m generally pro-right to repair bills but I’m not clear how far they can reasonably go - should companies that make phones or whatever with custom cpus (Apple, Samsung, etc with completely custom chips or custom configurations - arm licensees etc) be required to sell those chips freely? I’m not trying to be unreasonable: being able to replace a broken screen without replacing the entire device is reasonable, but th…
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Why would Google give up all that ad revenue to help Apple?
Because Google sells phones too. That nearly everyone in this thread has missed this fact so far is baffling.
I am generally in favor of being able to repair things, but this is complicated and I have yet to see a good discussion (let alone legislative proposal) that takes into account all of the nuance I see as necessary: 1. There has definitely been abuse of cryptographic locking by parties such as John Deer. I feel that places where such locking is used only to prevent third-party repairs it should be illegal. 2. I feel t…
I love everything about your discussion. 1. 100% agree 2. I've thought a little bit about this. I think it would be fine if the warranty can't be voided if the consumer can show in court that there's a preponderance of evidence that the issue they're having is unrelated to the third-party repair. This might mean in practice warranties hard to enforce if you've gone in for third-party repair, but I feel like usually i…
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Usually things like coffee grinders or electric stand mixers that have a motor and a gearbox include a plastic piece that is intended to fail first precisely so they are easily and cheaply repaired. They honestly should advertise it on the box, but that'd cut into their repair business.
In some cases, this is attributed to bad design or bad materials choice; and maybe in some cases, it's done to make you purchase a new model. But in many cases, such breakable parts are put in place for a reason. They are called "mechanical fuses" - also known by a few other names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrificial_part https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shear_pin They are designed to break if the machine comes un…
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You got a dirt cheap printer because you're paying with supplies. Printer heads are the normal price.
> You got a dirt cheap printer because you're paying with supplies. Give me one good reason why this particular business model - base subsidized by consumables - shouldn't be straight up banned. I can't think of any.
I don't think I've ever had one of my consumer printers break (and I use third-party ink so I'm not even subsidizing them in the end), so the extremity of this argument is surprising. It would be nice if there were aggregate stats on the fragility/lifetime of consumer printers, and maybe all consumer electronics in general.