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

wsj.com

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

#91

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

kragen wrote: post #69
fsflover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum length of support is not necessary. It's sufficient to force the companies to release the software as FLOSS after the support is ended.

while this would be an effective defense, it isn't an effective legal policy at the point that the support is ended, the company isn't making any more money on the product, so legal remedies like forbidding its importation or halting its manufacturing would be ineffective; even remedies like fines and injunctions to specific performance might be ineffective if the company no longer exists or no longer exports to your…

Legally mandated code+key escrow?

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

#92

Post by Brian_K_White »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #60
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…

> In short, the people who "purchased" these cameras do not own them. They do own the camera. They just don't own the cloud service that makes the camera useful. Or even operable. Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's story Unauthorized Bread .

Does the camera allow the supposed owner to install a firmware that can work with another service of the owner's choosing?

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

#93

Post by pandaman »

Games, just as movies, have anything from dogs to the people who kicked in $2 on the Kickstarter in credits, there has to be more to this story than this or there is soon going to be a massacre of some "rogue" catering driver taking down Disney's blockbusters.

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

#94

Post by gtvwill »

This is basically every apple product ever. Get turned into paperweights despite being fully functional devices just because apple won't supply updates, won't open firmware or software up for users to apply updates. Can't claim your a ethical company when you do toxic unethical crap like that. Legit e-waste created for nothing but maintenance of a companies profit. Shit drives me up the wall. Should be legislated against. You can tell alot about people's ethics by how much they like to fix and reuse things or how much value they put on repairable items.

Business tactics that are this malicious towards society on so many levels should be legislated out of existence.

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

#95

Post by duskwuff »

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…

The article isn't about point-and-shoot photo cameras, though. It's about surveillance video cameras.

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

#96

Post by logbiscuitswave »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #92
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In short, the people who "purchased" these cameras do not own them. They do own the camera. They just don't own the cloud service that makes the camera useful. Or even operable. Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's story Unauthorized Bread .

Does the camera allow the supposed owner to install a firmware that can work with another service of the owner's choosing?

Hardware is completely proprietary and closed source. All camera communications go through a black box hub device which talks to Arlo’s services. There’s no public API for any part of the hardware or software chain.

In other words, unless you’re going to take the time to reverse engineer all of it, you’re completely at their mercy.

Even if you opt for local storage you’re still beholden to their black box hub because that’s the only thing the cameras will talk to, and their app because that’s the only thing that will talk to their hub. (HomeKit and other integration exists but it doesn’t provide the full functionality you get from the app, and still requires their hub.)

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

#97

Post by logbiscuitswave »

Semaphor wrote: post #73
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In short, the people who "purchased" these cameras do not own them. They do own the camera. They just don't own the cloud service that makes the camera useful. Or even operable. Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's story Unauthorized Bread .

> They do own the camera. They just don't own the cloud service that makes the camera useful. Or even operable. I don’t know the model, but the article makes it seem as if the cameras work perfectly well without it? I hate online-only products and think they are between scam and trap, but this seems more a case of false advertising than anything like that.

Well-ish depending on your use case. It still requires their app, hub, and cloud services to work even just for steaming. There’s no completely “local only” mode.

You can use local storage to save recordings by connecting flash storage to the hub, but it’s only really useful a backup. You can’t view it in the app (you have to sneaker-net the storage to a computer), and it can only save triggered recordings.

Basically if you don’t care about storing and saving recordings for future use and only plan to stream from the cameras, then it’ll continue to work (as long as Arlo’s web services work of course).

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

#98

Post by ilyt »

yppop wrote: post #87
ilyt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if you thought you will pay flat fee and get online hosting till the end of time (and most likely didn't read the fine print that said it isn't infinite in time), that's on you

Well, that sounds like someone whoa attained their ‘sage wisdom’ through bitter experience —- and not through native wisdom. Not sayin’ you’re wrong, just sayin’. PS - yes, at one time, I probably bought a pair of those ‘X-ray glasses’ advertised in the backs of comic books.

I guess achieving "sage wisdom" of "reading the terms of service you pay for" attained at cost of only few shitty cameras is cheap for the affected.

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

#99

Post by tengwar2 »

fsflover wrote: post #22
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.

Minimum length of support is not necessary. It's sufficient to force the companies to release the software as FLOSS after the support is ended.

Length of suppport is necessary. It is not sufficient to just hand the source over. As an example, I paid for TiVo lifetime programme guides. This was quite explicitly a lifetime service. They cut it off when they introduced an HD service. Making the sw open source would in no way mitigate that termination.

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

#100

Post by m463 »

shortcake27 wrote: post #83
m463 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"smart" televisions just means long boot times and... intrusion. Why would smart cameras end up any different? I will say the DSLRs understand the necessity of immediacy - turn it on and take a shot. (well, there is the "turn it on" part) Honestly I don't know why phone cameras haven't understood the immediacy thing. why not dedicate one button to ALWAYS take a picture, getting the shot even at the expense of acciden…

This is something Apple has put a lot of work into and iOS handles photography UX very well. Wake the screen and swipe left (no need to authenticate). Camera loads in about 1s on my 4 year old XS. No shutter lag so you get the picture you see in the viewfinder. Also, “Live Photo” is enabled by default which takes multiple photos before and after you press the shutter and combines it into a single entry in the UI. You…

I frankly don't think apple has put enough work into it. I use it (swipe from locked screen) from time to time, but it sometimes (like gloves) swipe doesn't work and you miss the shot. You have to look and interact with the screen and that's a failure.

I guess most "i am elegant" tech companies just don't go for buttons. (apple, tesla, etc)

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