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The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

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Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#41

Post by RobotToaster »

spacephysics wrote: post #26
bell-cot wrote: post #6

Idea: Prosecute such companies for obtaining money under false pretenses. If you only get the thingie which you "bought" for a limited time - that is clearly a rental, not a sale.

It’s tough because what if the company doesn’t want to maintain the software? Are they obligated to keep the software up to date despite the one-time-sale? It’s a similar reason why much of the software moved to a subscription model, the recurring costs. Alternatively, there should be some group of smart individuals who come up with some protocol for various devices where, if a manufacturer decides to EoL the sale (s…

>Are they obligated to keep the software up to date despite the one-time-sale?

If it's a security issue, then it was sold defective.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#42

Post by [deleted] »

cs702 wrote: post #7

In short, the people who "purchased" these cameras do not own them. Specifically, the owners of these cameras may own the hardware, but cannot use it because they do not own nor control the software that runs it. Richard Stallman predicted this decades ago . Regardless of what you think of him, he was the first person to come up with the idea of free open-source software expressly to give users the ability to (quotin…

[deleted]

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#43

Post by pepperidgeFarm »

1-6 wrote: post #38

When companies advertise free for life, take it with a grain of salt. If they can't force people into a paid subscription, then they'll simply stop making the device work. Remember, if Google can cut off support, what makes you think others wouldn't? Remember Stadia? Customers should agree to nothing less other than getting refunded for their camera setup.

Perhaps Stadia is a bad example, because Pepperidge Farms remembers when Google refunded every purchase when Stadia shut down.

It was, however, surprising they chose to do so.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#44

Post by rolph »

voisin wrote: post #3

This problem will only be solved by legislation. If countries seek to reduce e-waste they need to force electronics makers to ensure a minimum length of support on the same conditions as existed on the date of sale - say 10 years.

how about software, or firmware, or any other digital component of a device must provide function as existed at time of sale for the physical lifetime of the product

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#45

Post by lokar »

1-6 wrote: post #38

When companies advertise free for life, take it with a grain of salt. If they can't force people into a paid subscription, then they'll simply stop making the device work. Remember, if Google can cut off support, what makes you think others wouldn't? Remember Stadia? Customers should agree to nothing less other than getting refunded for their camera setup.

I do remember stadia. I got a full refund for the hardware and all games purchased.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#47

Post by arthurofcharn »

sircastor wrote: post #29
eropple wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To put bluntly, anybody who buys hardware that is inexorably linked to some cloud-crap should be ashamed of themselves and deserve the loss of money as a learning experience. This isn't "blunt", this is just cruel. Nobody "deserves" to be the victim of false advertising or broken guarantees, particularly when they can reasonably lack the necessary contextual knowledge to analyze them beyond face value. Most people…

For a while I ran DDWRT on my routers, and spent hours learning about FreeNAS and ZFS. And I ran out of patience for it after a few years. I had more important things to do, and people to spend time with. My routers got replaced with Eeros and my NAS got replaced with a Synology. And while I don’t love that the former got bought by Amazon, both are pain free, and I spend a lot less time on them.

Good for you. If you want to have some non-free software in your home, you should have that choice. Someday, I will be skilled enough to run DDWRT on all my routers. But Everyone should have that choice, and plenty of consumer hardware is hardcoded to always serve their manufacturer, and not their owner. I will never again purchase hardware that I cannot control.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#48

Post by tarotuser »

chrisdalke wrote: post #11
tarotuser wrote: post #5

To put bluntly, anybody who buys hardware that is inexorably linked to some cloud-crap should be ashamed of themselves and deserve the loss of money as a learning experience. I *only* buy hardware that can be controlled and/or managed locally. Sure, it means some 'cool' gadgets aren't available in my world. But it does mean that what I buy will be supported and will just work. If that means you buy PoE cameras and ge…

This feels like a very tech-centric perspective. I agree with you, if you restrict this to the very IT-savvy group, but this shifts the blame away from companies’ bad design/behavior. Most people have no understanding of the difference between a cloud-connected device and one that just uses WiFi or BLE locally to communicate with an app. I’d say if you work for a company that produces this kind of crap IoT, shame on…

Wow.. the cognitive dissonance here is staggering.

Nowhere did I say "build it yourself". There's plenty of turnkey commercial/industrial solutions that are also plug-n-play. Most even have PoE already built in. The problem with them for end-users: you front-load the cost to initial build.

The real problem for users with cloud-crap is that it's exceptionally hard to assess risk with cloud crap.

As for me, my simplistic solution is that "cloud = unacceptable risk". But that somehow here has translated to "DIY garage build while etching my own silicon and boards", which totally minimizes what I'm actually saying.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#49

Post by RobotToaster »

voisin wrote: post #3

This problem will only be solved by legislation. If countries seek to reduce e-waste they need to force electronics makers to ensure a minimum length of support on the same conditions as existed on the date of sale - say 10 years.

Just require them to have a local only mode with feature parity and publicly documented interface.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#50

Post by switchbak »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #39

A lot of people advocate for traditional cameras gaining some sort of smart interface to facilitate sharing or some other such features. What they don't understand is that traditional cameras work extremely well with their dedicated but seemingly outdated interfaces, and moreover, they prevent things like this from happening. Replaceable batteries, replaceable storage, and "primitive" but exceptionally functional fir…

Not sure how better usability wrt to sharing from the camera would ensure that this kind of thing never happens.

I think cameras tend to work well over time because that's the expectation of the manufacturers and the purchasers, and photographers would rebel en masse otherwise.

If most consumers would be a little more prickly about these things and strongly punish these greedy companies, I don't think we'd see nearly as much of this. This kind of thing simply wouldn't fly in the 60s, but we've been conditioned to just accept it.

Well that and consumer protection is basically non-existent.

I still want to share photos easily from my camera though!

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