81–90 of 175 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From wikipedia, the introductory price was: > US$595 (equivalent to $1,596 in 2020) Slightly more than a Pi. I could not afford one back then, particularly when you factored in the floppy disk drive prices.
Still 3 times cheaper than the Apple II.
https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-Under-500-Computers-Tablets/s...
posted from a mac
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Environmental and consumer rights regulations are also compatible with a free market.
No they are not. Patents are incentives. You can weigh the benefits or lack thereof and chooses to opt-in or opt-out. Regulations are a government-created burden. You can't opt out of a regulation.
They are also regulations. You can't opt-out of the patent system.
> You can weigh the benefits or lack thereof and chooses to opt-in or opt-out.
What is your proposed mechanism to opt-out? Do you mean that an inventor can choose not to apply for a patent? If so, that's not an opt-out of the patent system. You are still subject to all other valid patents.
> Regulations are a government-created burden.
Including patent regulations. It seems you support the regulations that you consider "good" and call them incentives.
Environmental and consumer rights regulations are both regulations and incentives in exactly the way patents are. They are enforced by the state and incentivise certain behaviours.
> You can't opt out of a regulation.
True. As stated, you can't opt-out of patent regulations either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Environmental and consumer rights regulations are also compatible with a free market.
No they are not. Patents are incentives. You can weigh the benefits or lack thereof and chooses to opt-in or opt-out. Regulations are a government-created burden. You can't opt out of a regulation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still 3 times cheaper than the Apple II.
same as Mac vs Windows today. Cheapest Mac Laptop $999. Cheapest Windows laptop $199, $299? https://www.amazon.com/Laptops-Under-500-Computers-Tablets/s... posted from a mac
Am I the only believing it should be a free market, where each company follows the strategy it prefers? Let the market decide if repairability is desired or not. If customers really want it, certainly there will be companies offering it. Much better to have millions voting with their money and purchases than a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be.
> a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be Classic. > What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without inst…
Is the issue being framed incorrectly by the "right to repair" movement? Or are "freedom" and "liberty" understood very differently across the pond?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a few bureaucrats deciding how they believe things should be Classic. > What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without inst…
These quotes are good food for thought. I've never read anything from Chomsky. Any books in particular that you would recommend?
I heard about him in college via the "mathematical linguistics" stuff which was a pretty creative idea.
Like anyone else he also has defects, his more recent commentary on American politics is arguably worthless because he completely dismisses everyone to the right of him as "the most dangerous group on the planet."
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He goes over some fun and inspirational stories about that yes. But it's much more than that: "In a lot of people's minds power over others equates to money and profits. Hey, is it your computer, or is it some companies' computer?" He talks about companies trying to control and inhibiting repair and modification and compares it to the liberating and creative experience that he had and how that lead to him building th…
in other words, the Right to Repair movement is doing for hardware what the Free Software and Open Source movement is doing for software.
There are definitely people that want to go this far. They would like to see full schematics and part listings.
However I think most of the people don't need the specifications in "the preferred form for modification". They simply want to stop companies from taking steps against repairs. They don't necessarily want help doing the repairs, they just don't want to be thwarted. For example
- Outlaw contracts that forbid part manufacturers from selling parts to third parties.
- Outlaw "chip paring" features such as would give errors if you replaced a screen because it was the "wrong" screen.
- Remove restrictions on repair shops such as limits on number of parts and allowed types of repairs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's partly this. It's also partly about restoring the kind of rights one is supposed to get under the first-sale doctrine: ownership over the thing that you have bought.
The right to repair has nothing to do with open source and it is probably best to avoid conflating it with open source. It is going to be difficult enough to pass legislation to enable the access to components and schematics, as well as to prevent the implementation of technical barriers intended to make independent repair (and modifications) illegal. The reason why we reached this abysmal state of affairs has more t…
Well, you could; you just couldn't sell them. You could make them for private use, if you wanted.